


Thirty days

by aesc



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Angst, Brainwashing, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Dating, Dirty Talk, Dragons, Dreams, Eavesdropping, Emma runs a dating service okay, Established Relationship, Fanart, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Gay Mutant Road Trip, Kid Fic, Language Kink, Love Letters, M/M, Mad Men (freeform), Masturbation, Mental Coercion, Minor Violence, Mutant Hate, Mutant Pride, Mutant Rights, Nostalgia, PTSD, Pining, Poetry, Porn With Plot, Post-Apocalypse, Pre-Slash, Psychic Bond, Religious Conflict, Sexual Frustration, Telepathy, Teslapunk, Time Travel, Wine, Worldbuilding, Yoga, little tiny Erik and Charles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:37:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 123,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[self-challenge: 30 fics/ficlets in 30 days]</p><p>In which there are Mad Mutants, medieval mutants, dirty letters, mutants in space, sexual frustration in inappropriate venues, Bookshop 'verse Mutant Pride Day, Charles looks for serenity with a hostile yoga instructor, Erik has strange dreams and Charles has a ruined planet, Erik's on a mission to find a mutant who can't be found, dragons,  Charles shows Erik what telepathy is like, Erik is a food critic who can't stand Charles the vintner and his stupid wines, Erik dreams and lets Charles see it, reunion sex, Charles has to show Erik why telepathic ethics are important, and there are two amazing, ingenious devices that bring Erik and Charles together even as Shaw continues to be awful, Emma runs a dating service, and Erik and Charles are the world's most boring couple... until they're not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mad mutants

**Author's Note:**

> As a writing challenge to myself, inspired by my lovely new Write or Die app, I want to try writing something fic-related every day. (It's also because after a month or so I won't be able to do nearly as much writing anymore--hurray paycheck, boo new work.) So that means... thirty days of fic before I have to consign myself to productivity once again.
> 
> Because the fic on any given day day won't necessarily bear any relationship to the one(s) before it, I'll place all relevant non-archive warnings in the header. Archive warnings and tags will be posted as usual. And because I'm lazy, everything that isn't a chapter in a WIP will go into this one multi-chaptered story. Everything might not be as long as today's installment, but I'm hoping to average ~1,000 words, if not a bit more, per day.
> 
> And finally, if you would like to leave a prompt in a comment, prompts are always welcome! That includes general prompts, timestamps for fics I've written, canon stuff, AU stuff, prompts from poems/songs/vids et al. Pretty much the only things I don't write are death and rape, because of Reasons, but everything else is fair game.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lehnsherr is already spiky with irritation at being kept waiting, never mind that he's five minutes early and has barely had enough time to snap off his drink order. She traces carefully over the surface of his thoughts: the irritation, speculation on the unnamed executive he'd been told he'd be meeting for his initial interview, fascination with the wrought iron in the windows and the coins in his pocket – oh, now Charles will be _more_ than interested. Emma grins, wide enough to fluster the maître d as he bustles up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Erik/Charles  
> Warnings: Period-appropriate homophobia, rampant capitalism  
> Advertisements: Mad Men fusion/freeform, still have powers, better evolution through advertising, Erik looking hot in his suits, Charles being a cunning individual, Emma being too awesome for words

**Mad mutants**

None of the men at the bar are worth talking to. They rarely are, whether the bar is the Ritz or St. Regis, or the less savory ones she'd slummed at in her youth. In this case it's the men of the St. Regis, and most of them are well on their way to their afternoon hangovers. It means they're more interested in flirting or introducing her to their clients as "my cousin Betty," how much do you charge sweetheart, and really you'd think they'd _know_ by now.

Emma Frost sighs, exasperation and smoke mixing with the close air of the bar. The gin and tonic is fresh on her tongue, though, courtesy of the young blond man a few seats down. He's fresh-faced, almost fresh-faced enough to be Charles, but ultimately forgettable: his blond-and-blue good looks would go for a song in Newport or the Vineyard. Still, he's good for a drink and killing time while she waits for Lehnsherr to show up.

Which… Emma stretches out her thoughts, hearing a roughly-accented voice demand a table for two, reservations under Xavier-Frost. The maître d' is a buzz of confusion in response; she has to brush it aside to get a fix on the newly-arrived Lehnsherr, who is precisely-engineered iron and purpose.

Oh, Charles will _love_ this. Emma grinds out her cigarette and leaves her drink to sweat the last of its coolness out onto the bar, offers the bartender her best smile. It's the one that makes promises she usually doesn't intend to keep, but the bartender puffs up all the same and tells her to have a good day, come back later.

Lehnsherr is already spiky with irritation at being kept waiting, never mind that he's five minutes early and has barely had enough time to snap off his drink order. She traces carefully over the surface of his thoughts: the irritation, speculation on the unnamed executive he'd been told he'd be meeting for his initial interview, fascination with the wrought iron in the windows and the coins in his pocket – oh, now Charles will be _more_ than interested. Emma grins, wide enough to fluster the maître d as he bustles up.

Thinking about Charles this way inevitably attracts his attention. He manifests as a sly brush across the corner of her awareness, a wordless _what are you up to?_ she fends off with a mental slap and a _Surprises, sweetie. Good things come, et cetera, et cetera._

He retires, only because he genuinely does enjoy surprises; if he really wanted to find out, he would have snapped that information out of her brain without being so polite and obvious about it. Being what he is, he enjoys surprises so rarely, and Emma – in a strange way that is not precisely altruistic – enjoys giving them to him.

Lehnsherr, she decides, will be the best kind of surprise.

From her cursory skim through his thoughts she has a general idea of what he looks like – flash of a face, flecked with shaving foam, in a mirror – but it's nothing in comparison to the sight of him as he stands to greet her when it becomes clear she's focused on him: broad shoulders kept barely civil by a sober grey suit, tie knotted with geometrical precision, a face and pale eyes that hold ferocity and determination, a mouth that could be generous but prefers not to be. His hands aren't the sleek executives' hands she's used to; the one he takes her hand in is rough at the edges, the bones prominent in the knuckles.

He built his company with his own hands, quite literally. She's read the translations Irene's done of the German newspaper articles, the Jewish _wunderkind_ who resurrected his parents' tuning company from the ashes of the war. He doesn't fit with the polish of the St. Regis, not its expensive cigar smoke or thick carpets or leather-upholstered chairs; she'd caught his annoyance at watching two men plow their way through whiskey sours and plates of oysters, _waste of food, waste of time, waste of space_ , and she gives herself thanks for going low-key today. Anything more ostentatious and he'd be gone in a second.

"Emma Frost," she says, going for smooth and controlled rather than warm. His grip on her hand makes no concessions, not to sex or propriety. "Erik Lehnsherr of Eisenhardt Engineering, I take it."

"You take it correctly." Ah, the wisp of accent. German, with lord knows how many countries in between. He runs a skeptical eye over her. "Emma Frost of the Xavier-Frost Agency, then."

"Guilty as charged." She sets her jacket across the back of the chair, spares a thought for what a pity it is, that all her effort – the dress, the demure diamonds at her neck and wrists and ears, the lipstick – is also all for nothing.

Barely civilized or not, unimpressed or not, he pulls out her seat for her, and remains standing until she's situated herself. She catches the edge of impatience, like being cut by a fine-ground razor, the longing to get the niceties out of the way, the _display_ Americans insist is so necessary to everything they do.

_I would not be interested if I thought they could not do the work_ , he's thinking, along with some less complimentary thoughts about why Xavier-Frost would send a woman to court a potential new client, and _it's a pity their efforts are wasted there._

Still, he's grudgingly intrigued – as close as he'll get to being admiring – over the agency's choice to send a woman to woo him for his business, when women are still fighting to get out of the secretarial pool.

Charles is going to be _delighted_. It's an effort for Emma to restrain her smile and order another gin and tonic from the waiter hovering at her elbow.

"I suppose," she says, once the waiter is gone, "we ought to get down to brass tacks."

"The brass tacks," Lehnsherr says, "is that I would like to hire you to produce my ad campaign. Eisenhardt Engineering is ready to go global. We have the product, the quality, the demand is there…"

"Of course." Emma pauses to let the waiter serve them their drinks. Lehnsherr irritably waves off any mention of lunch; so be it, Emma's drunk far more on far less. "Mr. Xavier and I were quite impressed with the prospectus you sent us. Our primary concern is your factory's ability to _meet_ the demand, even with your production methods. Typically mass production and hand-crafted engines aren't good bedfellows."

Lehnsherr's eyes narrow at the _bedfellows_ and he takes a short swallow of his whiskey. He's not stalling precisely: he's too confident by far even to pretend to be uncertain.

"One option, assuming money is the object, is to sell." The silence from Lehnsherr's side of the table becomes dangerous; it's no stretch of her telepathy to know that he's displeased. _Angry_ , and his anger burns cold rather than hot. "If you became an independent subsidiary, for example, you would retain control over product and distribution. You'd have to sacrifice less on the quality side of things."

"And make myself dependent on BMW or Mercedes? I think not," Lehnsherr says coldly. " I would not have come to you if I wanted to prostitute myself or my company."

"Some prostitution is always necessary." Lehnsherr, queer or not, can't help glancing at her décolletage. It's closer to Chanel respectability than girl on the bar scene, not Emma's usual taste, but the profile she and Charles had drawn up suggested Lehnsherr would react badly to the thought of anyone whoring themselves – literally or figuratively – for his money. "If you want to become a legitimate presence on the market, manufacturing your own cars instead of engines only, you'll have to make some sacrifices."

Lehnsherr leans back, scowling. He doesn't look away from her, and it's unexpectedly difficult – even for someone who's worked with Charles Xavier – for her to meet his gaze.

"Industry is an art," Emma says. It's not really the conversation she wants to have; it's better to offer them the moon first, and then bring them back down to Earth stages at a time. Like all of them, Lehnsherr has ambition, but he also has a loyalty to his company that's as ferocious as his all-tooth smile. It demands honesty and, well, the devil can tell the truth when it serves his purpose, so Emma can too. "With judicious marketing, however, we can find a balance between getting you the exposure and market you need with the production method you want."

The nod she gets is almost grudging. Lehnsherr isn't a man used to concessions. She counts this as a victory, if a tentative one.

"Charles, Armando and Raven will, I'm sure, have more specifics, but we've had some discussions from the prospectus and materials you sent us last month." She has the materials in her purse, but she also has a steel-trap memory; it's more impressive, even if some men act like she's a particularly talented dog reciting Shakespeare than a legitimate competitor. It's a mistake the smart ones make only once; fortunately for her, most of them aren't all that smart. "Emphasizing the hand-crafted, precision-engineered quality, for example. A bit of Europe to let your valet drive to the parking garage at Lutèce."

"Europe?" Lehnsherr's thin mouth curls in something like a smile. "Very diplomatic, Miss Frost."

"Americans fetishize Europe." It's true; very little of what Emma has in her closets has its roots in the United States. Her shoes are Italian, her suit French, the custom jewelry done by a Polish Jew who'd been off the boat for scarcely more than ten years. "Pure, red-white-and-blue-blooded patriotism is for the proletariat; the rest of us are satisfied with fireworks on the Fourth of July and being sophisticated for the rest of the year."

"So we'd be making money off hypocrisy," Lehnsherr says wryly. A flicker of resentment, then: he doesn't like the idea of disenfranchisement in any form, unless it's the undeserving rich. It's hazy in his head, a philosophy too deeply held to be properly articulated.

"Hypocrisy can be quite profitable, if you play your cards right." Emma has better reason to know about hypocrisy than almost anyone else, except for Charles: sometimes the disjunct between what people say and what goes on in their heads gives her pause while she sorts them out. "If you'll throw your hand in with ours…"

"Let's see how this afternoon's interview goes." Lehnsherr's voice goes cool again.

"Then," Emma sips the last of her drink, "shall I take you to meet Mr. Xavier?"

* * *

The Xavier-Frost Agency takes up only three floors of a Madison Avenue high-rise. "Small, but deadly," Frost says as she flips a few bills at the cab driver. "We've a higher profit margin per employee than most of the big firms."

"But you're only twelfth in earnings." He's done his homework, of course. XFA ranks highly among small to mid-sized advertising agencies, and twelfth overall is good for their size, but that means less exposure, less buying power, fewer contacts. "You can't tell me that a pair of Madison Avenue executives isn't interested in more money."

"I'm sure you'd agree that money is only part of it," Frost replies smoothly. "If you really do wish to hear all about our agency's corporate philosophy, Charles will be _more_ than happy to tell you all about it, trust me."

The building she leads him through is a modern cathedral of glossy marble, the furniture dwarfed by the high ceilings and recessed lights. The hurrying footsteps of clients and employees are insignificant, unable to fill the vast sense of space above and around them. Erik already knows the bones of this building, sturdy underneath the antique stonework. Behind the marble the huge steel gears of the elevators sigh in their endless up-and-down, and Erik pauses to relish the harmony of the cables and the counter-weights, a song humming close to his ear. Frost, however, doesn't pause; she boards the elevator and gives him an indulgently impatient look.

"Charles owns the building," she says and presses the button. It's meant to be an explanation – for what, Erik needs a moment to work out before he gets it: no attendant.

"He owns twenty floors' worth of building and your agency can't crack the top ten." Erik wonders if it's willful mediocrity, the work put in by the sort of person who gets spat straight from the womb into a pile of money, and has to breathe before he takes his anger out on the elevator.

"You'll have to talk to Charles about that," Frost says, as cool as her name now. The coolness melts, though, and she says with rather more mischief, "He will _love_ meeting you."

She says it in a way that suggests Xavier will love meeting him in a way that has nothing to do with meeting a prospective client. It's something to meditate on as they step out on the twentieth floor to a panorama of the city, an ocean of steel and iron glittering in the midafternoon light. Erik makes himself put Xavier and the city at the back of his mind and concentrate on civility.

There are people to meet before they step into the holy of holies that is Xavier's office, mostly the creative staff as they hustle back to their typewriters and drawing boards. He glances over the office itself, bright colors against matte gray, posters from award-winning campaigns. One of the staff interrupts him as she comes hurrying up, a large folder clasped to her chest.

"Raven Darkholme," Frost says with a wave.

"Pleasure." Raven doesn't relinquish her hold on the portfolio, offering him a thin smile instead of her hand. She's a fresh-looking girl who would have been relegated to the typing pool and a life of sexual propositions in any other company, Erik thinks. Her hair is thick and blonde, her eyes bright with a youthful energy he finds exhausting; under the softness, though, she's got a powerful grip – enough that Erik winces when she does finally condescend to shake his hand.

"All that drawing," Raven says mischievously.

"And beating us at arm-wrestling," the young man next to her says. He's blond like she is, and the office is starting to feel oppressively Aryan. "I'm Alex, by the way. Copywriting. Sean's around here somewhere… He does radio and TV."

"Getting high, probably," Raven puts in despite a warning glare from Frost.

Despite himself, Erik smiles. He likes the camaraderie, even if it's obnoxiously inefficient.

"Hey Raven, you got those drafts?" Another voice, this one belonging to a young black man who's looking out from his office. "No sneaking around pretending you're Angel to get out of doing them, either."

"Sure thing," Raven huffs. She waves the portfolio at Erik. "No rest for the wicked, I guess. Keep your pants on, Armando."

She rushes off, though, in a cloud of blond hair and perfume. Erik catches the edge of Armando's exasperated _Finally_ before the door to his office swings shut.

"Artists," Frost sighs. "Ignore anything you heard about Sean."

Charles's secretary is gone from her desk – "His desk," Frost says absently, "Henry's got classes Monday and Wednesday" – and Frost doesn't even bother knocking before opening Charles's office door.

"Have fun," she says, her blue eyes sly as she ushers him in.

"Ah!" says the redoubtable Charles Xavier, turning from where he's stationed himself by the windows. "Mr. Lehnsherr, welcome."

Charles Xavier is… not quite what Erik had anticipated from the photo in the company information materials. He's short, which is not what Erik had expected, but his presence fills the room anyway, as if the energy of something much larger – a sun, maybe – has been concentrated and made to fit a trim figure. The hand Erik accepts is soft and warm and firm; the handshake is enthusiastic in a way that suggests the enthusiasm is not an act. The accent suggests the most Erik should have gotten was a cursory greeting and an invitation to sit, not… this.

"It's a pleasure," Xavier is saying. He releases Erik's hand in order to wave him to a chair. "Can I get you anything? You look like a Scotch man."

Erik _is_ in fact a Scotch man; he thinks about asking for something else, just to be contrary. Xavier grins before he can say anything, taking his silence for confirmation, and turns to a cabinet on which sit an ice bucket and several bottles in varying states of fullness.

"Auchentoshan, eighteen-year." Xavier's sigh is one of ineffable happiness once he's taken a sip. Erik has to agree, once he's stopped meditating on the fluid line of Xavier's throat as he swallows. Xavier smirks at him over the cut-glass rim of his tumbler, touches a finger to his temple. "You also strike me as a man who appreciates fine things against his will."

"Well-made things, always," Erik says. "What I don't appreciate is extravagance."

"Your cars speak to that. Grace through economy – nothing wasted, everything exactly where it ought to be, not an ounce of spare flesh. It's not exactly the spirit of the 1960s."

Erik hides his surprise. This hadn't been the line of conversation at any of the three other places he'd visited. He's figured they're saving that for when they think they've got him on the hook, and it would be insulting if he hadn't been used to it, or if they hadn't been so honestly shocked when he'd walked out of their offices.

Xavier is studying him with an intensity that doesn't belong on Madison Avenue. It belongs… Erik isn't precisely sure where. It's a focus he's only encountered in himself, when engineering the motors that have made his company famous.

"Of course, Eisenhardt Engineering has powered cars that have won races across Europe," Xavier says reflectively. He hasn't stopped looking, and a chill flashes through him, because that had been his next thought: _Look at our accomplishments. That makes up for having none of the frilly nonsense Americans insist on_. "I have your concept design for the Eisenhardt S400. All the young men in the office agree it's 'cherry.' Which I suppose means the same as groovy."

"Well, if the young men think it's good," Erik begins, giving Xavier the benefit of some sarcasm. Xavier only grins. "As you seem to be doing me the honor of believing I'm intelligent, I'll ask you why you're telling me this."

Xavier sets his glass aside, all seriousness now. Those eyes of his have gone somber, the ocean under a cloudy sky. "My selfish explanation would be 'because I've no interest in making a lot of money in the short run,'" he says, "and my altruistic explanation would be 'because I've no interest in exploiting anyone.'"

"So you're a humanitarian." One glance around the office – rich wood, carpets, art that isn't the kind Xavier had his secretary buy – suggests otherwise, or suggests the kind of humanitarian who is one because he can afford to be, and it looks good.

"Oh, my friend, I've never said that. I have my ethics, of course, as most people do. But also," Xavier shrugs, "the people and companies my agency works with tend to be those with the most to lose and the least to risk. I find a measure of reality is beneficial, even if Emma does not. The stick after the carrot, as it were."

"And my dose of reality is that I'm not _ostentatious_ enough." He almost, _almost_ wants to respect this man.

"Emma was right, when she said you could guarantee your income if you sold controlling interest in Eisenhardt to a major manufacturer and became their in-house tuning company," Xavier says. "But you rejected that. That tells me your stake in the company is much more meaningful than the money you get from it. Your… history tells me you are devoted to the legacy your parents left for you and that you managed to reclaim. And," Xavier's pause is longer this time, "your mind tells me that you have far more invested in your company's success on the world stage than your money."

"My _mind_ ," Erik says incredulously.

_Indeed_ , Xavier says, without opening his mouth. His voice resonates in the tiniest spaces of Erik's skull, filling him up so he can't hear anything else.

"You – " He's staring now, openly; he can't help it. Xavier's smugness has vanished, replaced by a watchfulness and determination that looks distressingly appropriate on that young face. "You – you were – _you were in my head._ "

"You have your tricks, I have mine." It's not as flippant as it could be and Erik – Erik is poleaxed, utterly wrong-footed.

"How did you do that?" He staggers to his feet, putting some distance between them – the chairs are placed close together – as if that matters. "What _are_ you?"

"Exactly what you are, Erik." Xavier leans forward, eyes intent. "A mutant. Someone gifted with abilities rather apart from the general run of humanity."

Erik thinks about the day his powers manifested, that dark, terrible day in the camps. The memory isn't clear, smudged as if terror had drawn a finger across its surface and blurred it. Xavier's mouth twists, a soft sound escaping him, and Erik realizes – "You can read minds."

"Read minds, transmit thoughts, alter memories, control people if it comes down to it," Xavier says. "Now, please calm down and sit down."

"Stay out of my head then," Erik growls, feeling somewhat better for having something to be angry at. He searches for some trace of Xavier in his head, but aside from the peculiar memory of Xavier speaking – so extraordinary, he thinks he'll never forget it – he can't find anything. 

"Of course," Xavier says calmly. "So long as you agree not to stab me in the heart with my tie clip."

Erik lets the tie clip go, one last admonitory caress across the silver of it. Xavier quirks a brow at him. Slowly, slowly enough to make it clear he's sitting because he _wants_ to and not because Xavier has any say in the matter, he sits.

"I thought I was alone," Erik says at last. The knowledge is starting to settle, disbelief melting into a hesitant acceptance and something like relief as he leans back in his chair. _Someone like me_ , he thinks, marveling over it.

Xavier's, _Charles's_ , smile is warm; it's warm right through, like the sun. "You're not alone."

"I don't…" He laughs. "I was not expecting this today."

"So few of us do." Charles is leaning into his space now, unashamed. "It's such a pleasure to meet you, Erik, truly."

It's utterly appropriate, Erik thinks suddenly, for a telepath to be in charge of advertising. Charles must catch the edge of the thought, because he laughs his own quiet laugh, which is so full of delight Erik wants to hear it again.

"We're all mutants of course." The lecturing tone is back, clearly something Charles can't abandon completely. Erik's too enthralled to be annoyed, too caught up in _someone like me_ to mind it as much as he otherwise would. Maybe, he thinks, it's because Xavier is _Charles_ now. "Mutation is what took us from being single-celled organisms to what we are now, and it's due to mutation that we'll be whatever we'll be if we don't erase ourselves with nuclear weapons."

"But we're different somehow."

"Oh, doubtless. Very nearly everyone in this office is a mutant – Raven is a shapeshifter, Emma is a telepath, Alex generates plasma energy, Angel can fly, Armando can adapt to almost any conceivable challenge – truly a tremendous array of talents for such a small group. The diversity, the potential for greater diversity, is out there. It's a matter of finding it."

"Diversity or superiority?" Erik imagines Raven impersonating anyone she chooses (and what does she look like under that blonde and cream mask?), Alex laying a city waste, Charles and Emma making the world believe whatever they wish. All of this power, collected in three floors of an _advertising agency_ …

"Superior?" Charles makes an equivocating gesture. "I'm not comfortable with that. We are what we are, scientifically speaking. We may be more suited to environmental challenges that are developing as the world changes, but at the moment there are too few of us to say for sure."

"At first I thought I was mad," Erik confesses, "that the camps had done something to me, beyond what they'd already done. But then I realized that was not the case."

"When you killed the guard hurting your mother," Charles says, and when Erik starts, adds, "It was a very strong thought; I can't block those out, not without denying what _I_ am, and that I refuse to do."

Erik nods grudgingly. "I'll not have your pity or your condescension."

"I won't offer it." Charles taps on the table positioned by his elbow. There's a chess set on it, the marble tops of the pieces worn down by who knew how many fingers. It's in the middle of a game – "Not for show," Charles says, "Henry and I play" – and Erik wonders what it would be like to match himself against this man. "But, on a related topic, you must be here for a reason, other than to see what a twelfth-ranking advertising agency looks like."

"You work with smaller companies," Erik says. "Start-ups, family companies, ones run by women, minorities. I was impressed by that."

"Reluctantly," Charles says with a grin that Erik has to return. Rather more seriously, he says, "I'm glad we impressed you."

A thought occurs to Erik, a dawning realization. "Your company, it works the way it does because of what you are."

"Exactly so." Charles's smile drips self-satisfaction, tangible enough Erik thinks he could reach out and touch it – reach out and touch it like he could touch that mouth. "Old myths are dying out, my friend; the people who cling to them are going to find themselves obsolete sooner, rather than later. And one of those myths is that humanity is the apex of evolution. _Homo sapiens_ is only one stop on the road. We're the next."

"Better evolution through advertising, then?" Erik says, only half-joking.

"Humans have succeeded because we've managed to adapt ourselves _and_ our environments to our needs," Charles says. "That's where we skew the curve: humans have the potential to respond _very_ effectively to perceived threats."

Erik's had ample experience of that. Nearly every year of his life, since his first memory, that one year of fighting and scraping, trying to coax his mercurial power out of himself so he could save his people. It had never worked, not unless he'd had his anger behind him; in the wreckage of the war, the haze of being transported to a refugee camp and the years of searching afterward for the man who killed his mother, it had little direction. The company channels it now, the promise of power and influence, protection against the future.

"We're very much alike you and I," Charles says, sounding almost wistful. "You _understand_ , on some level, that there are ways to build safety for ourselves. Emma used to work with a man, another mutant, who thought that destroying all humanity – condemning them as lesser creatures – would give him the safety and power he wanted. Fortunately, Emma decided she would much rather live in a world with air conditioning than scraping for survival in a post-nuclear apocalypse. Most of us would, if it came down to it."

"Humans _are_ lesser creatures." It's something he's held to as he's made the engines that car makers say will drive the future; no human hand could make them, it's his power alone that's capable of the balance, the molecule-fine tuning. "We're the better men, Charles. The better creation."

Charles gives him a reproving look. "That way lies madness, Erik. I could give you the name of Emma's old colleague and you could pursue world destruction together, if you're that married to it."

"Then what's _your_ plan? I won't allow myself to be placed in chains again." He won't allow Charles. Or Emma. Or any of the other kin out there he hasn't yet found.

"To buy time – quite literally – and space for mutants to grow into. To give us access to the resources we need to stake our claim in the world and become the standard rather than the exception. And by the time there are enough of us, enough children to be in the schools, enough adults in the business world, the military, the government… It will be as if we've been there all along. We've brought good things to the world: fast cars, better television sets, safer streets, comfort to the sick and dying and alone. And people won't want to be without those things, because companies like my agency will have made it clear that those things are necessary – so necessary it doesn't matter if the CEO of the company making them can control metal."

"Or they'll think they've been drinking from a poisoned well all this time." Erik knows this from experience. "People can turn on what they fear, or what they think they fear. They're mindless like that."

"It won't be smooth, but my strategy means we'll also have the power to protect our people," Charles says. He's lit up with the kind of passion that grabs you by the scruff and drags you along; Erik is carried up, nearly out of himself as Charles's future spins itself out in front of him. "Knowledge and money both translate to power, Erik, if you know how to work the sums out."

"And you're hoping it will add up to… assimilation?"

"Of a sort. We'll be the dominant species eventually; I just want to make sure we have the time to get there." Charles stands and moves over to the window, to look out over the siren song of steel and glass spread out before it. "In a way, my belief is as ruthless as yours, Erik. There's not much room for sentiment in it, which is why I think we ought to hold on to what gives us the potential to be good." He pauses. "Our parents were humans, most of the people we know are humans. They carry the future, even if _we_ are the future; it's through them that more of us will come into being, and that can't be jeopardized. Do you understand?"

Erik's gotten up to join him. They're standing close, enough that their elbows could brush if they wanted it. Charles might; he knows what Erik is, and hasn't shrunk away.

"Do you understand?" Charles asks again.

"I think so." The implications of Charles's arguments could frighten him, if he dwells on them, and Erik Lehnsherr has long since finished with being afraid. It's a long game, dependent on too many factors for him to suss out, relying as much on luck as on Charles's incomprehensible power.

But it _can_ be done. He has the power and determination to make himself a success; he can't believe the humans can stand against it, not when he has his own abilities and Charles on his side.

"So," he says to cover himself and the sudden wild surge of hope that clogs his chest and makes him dizzy, "will you help me take over the world?"

Charles turns away from the city to grin at him. It makes him look younger than he is, years younger; it's a smile Erik can't help but match.

"My friend," Charles says, "I would be delighted."

_I told you you would like him_. It's Emma's voice, cool and crystalline – and, apparently, something she'd said to Charles earlier and something Charles would prefer not to be overheard by Erik, because Charles has gone becomingly pink with embarrassment. Erik lets the thought sit in the front of his head for Charles to pick up if he wants.

The soft noise Charles makes tells him he has.

"Ignore my colleagues," Charles mumbles. "They're awful individuals. Completely terrible."

"Perhaps dinner then," Erik says, smoother now that Charles has proven he can be disconcerted. "Alone, if you can't stand being in their company."

"I know just the place," Charles replies, and slides a finger down Erik's jacket to brush against the side of his palm – just a touch, a hint, enough to pull Erik along behind him as they leave the office, as Charles announces (loudly) he'll be leaving for the afternoon, and not to expect him back.

Emma's bright, telepathic laughter follows them down the elevator and out onto the city streets and the tide of metal that surges back and forth.


	2. Tagelied

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reluctantly, although he _has_ been looking for Charles for far too long, Erik follows the directions down an ominously dark alley to where a pool of dirty light has spilled across the stones. Caught in its margins, its yellow paint as bright as gold leaf, is the promised sign: a pilgrim with a gold cross stitched onto his tunic, carrying not a palm but an overflowing wine cup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Erik/Charles  
> Warnings: violence, period-appropriate homophobia (referenced)  
> Advertisements: medieval/historical AU, still have powers, language kink, poetry kink
> 
> This fic is one of the reasons my "30 fics in 30 days" challenge exists, because I have been dithering over it for the past month without committing to getting it done. So now it's finished!
> 
> Massive notes and translations are at the end. If you're interested in more of the poetry, feel free to ask!

**Tagelied**

The journey back west had taken forever, first going against the wind across the Mediterranean and then a long trek overland from Venice. On the way, the strained tolerance shared by Christians, Jews, and Muslims for each other had vanished. In the Holy Land, even in Byzantium, Erik had been able to find hostels or hospitals that provided separate quarters and food for traveling Jews if he could not lodge with one of his own people, but the desolation of Germany – whole communities vanished in the heat of Christian torches – reminds him of what the world is truly like.

Even in the warm glow of Charles's presence – the two of them talking in the study of a house belonging to one of Charles's friends – Erik had remained wary. Now, it's little effort to remember that the people crowding around him in the Paris streets are Christian, and human; they have little understanding of, and less love for, what he is.

His travels have been driven by two things: his vengeance and his desire to find out what he is. They have taken him from his home in the Rhineland to Toledo, and then across the great sea to Jerusalem and then overland to Byzantium and Constantinople. He has no answers, but he's had his vengeance.

Erik ben Jacob, uncomfortably aware that Friday's sundown had long since found him far from the Jewish quarters of the city, hurries along beneath the shadows. He could have done without the precaution: Paris's students, too wrapped up in their studies or their drunkenness, ignore him so thoroughly Erik half-expects that his _talent_ can render him invisible, not only move metal things. The students have little metal on them – mostly coins to spend on drink, or a concealed dagger to flout the city authorities, but Erik tracks them nonetheless. He's come this far without bloodshed – his own blood, at any rate – and he refuses to think about the possibility of being stoned by a pack of inebriate scholars.

Nothing distinguishes him from the young, half-in-shadow faces passing by, nothing as a Jew, and nothing as the _prodigium_ who had slaughtered twenty Latins with their own swords, or another with the blade of his own cross. For a moment, Erik regrets that, and the regret heats his blood.

 _Please, no chaos tonight_ , comes a familiar voice, smooth and cool as a river. _I know you've been looking for me; take a right at the next bookseller's and stop at the sign of the cross, why don't you?_

Reluctantly, although he _has_ been looking for Charles for far too long, Erik follows the directions down an ominously dark alley to where a pool of dirty light has spilled across the stones. Caught in its margins, its yellow paint as bright as gold leaf, is the promised sign: a pilgrim with a gold cross stitched onto his tunic, carrying not a palm but an overflowing wine cup.

 _In hoc signo vinces_ , Charles says, sounding bitter.

 _Really, Charles?_ Erik asks. He gets back more amusement, with a tinge of drunkenness this time.

Charles has to be well and truly soused for him to be dripping boozy thoughts all over Erik. Abruptly and deeply annoyed, Erik pushes a student aside and barges in.

"Alas, yes," Charles says, catching sight of Erik in the doorway. His voice – aided, maybe, by Charles's own _talent_ , or by Erik's peculiar awareness of him – carries effortlessly over the commotion. A group of students, _disciples_ it looks like, have gathered around him and are now, to a man, staring at Erik. Charles gazes benevolently at them and says, " _Comites_ , this is a friend of mine, a most learned and reverend man. Make him welcome?"

Wordlessly, the students shuffle over to make room, and a vacant chair, for Erik at Charles's side. A cup of wine appears a moment later. Erik pushes it aside.

"Be welcome, then, to the _fraternitas Goliae_." Charles beams; the smile does not quite reach his eyes, which remain cool and distant, entirely un-Charleslike. Erik dismisses the young men immediately, turning to Charles with a questioning (and unabashedly disbelieving) look.

 _This place seemed… appropriate is not the word_ , Charles says in his silent voice, rather more sober now. His extraordinary eyes are locked on Erik. _Would you please stay? I'll be rid of this crew in a few minutes._

The _crew_ in question is made of seven or eight young men who proceed to ignore Erik in favor of hanging, with the desperation of the drunk, on Charles's every word. Some of them seem determined to talk philosophy, especially one dark-haired and frighteningly earnest young man who is sober compared to the rest of them. The rest ask for poetry and, when Charles refuses, recite some themselves.

"O, Carole Anglicane, misere me!" one of the students sighs before declaiming, " _Ave! splendor telluris Anglice… Errant quidem, inmo peccant qui te vocant Anglicum_." He pauses, brow furrowing, and Erik realizes with a pang of vicarious embarrassment that the boy is trying to remember the next line. After a moment, the student brightens and concludes, his accent drink-slurred, "Ah, oh, yes: _Et vocalem interponant, et dicant 'angelicum.'_ "

Erik stares. Charles goes faintly red – or redder than he is already—above the collar of his dark cloak.

"They're joking," Charles says. "Right, Peter?"

"Fuck no," Peter says with a leer. "I'd do you."

Erik gives very serious thought to breaking Peter's arm. Charles makes a choking sound into his wine cup.

"It's time for a toast!" cries another young man. His colleagues enthusiastically second him.

They all look alike to Erik – same dark, loose clothes, the better to hide the wine stains – and sound alike for that matter, polished Latin slipping into a thicket of the students' own dialects and a slurry of profanity. Student Number Two seizes his cup, drops two dice in it with a splash and, after a salute that spills half the cup's contents down his sleeve, shouts _Qui nos rodunt confundantur!_ at the top of his lungs, and downs the rest. His fellows solemnly give the response, _et in iustis non scribantur_ , and knock their own drinks back. 

Charles sips his wine slowly and decorously – disinterestedly, Erik knows, because the wine smells terrible. Underneath the alcoholic flush of his cheeks, something sober and warm runs like honey – regret and welcome, Erik decides. _I've missed you._

He drinks his own wine with caution. Outside the wine's own decided mediocrity, the proscriptions forbids sharing wine with Gentiles. In Constantinople he had drunk with Charles often enough, and his travels in search of Nikolaus Schmidt von Schauen have required him to ignore the Law in favor of survival or information. He catches the edge of Charles's regret a moment before Charles himself stands and begins to detach himself from his followers, who groan and protest noisily.

"You ought to take it up again," the dark-haired and awkward one says with some resentment. "And I don't mean the drink, I mean your obligation to the university."

"I'll think on it, Henry," Charles says absently but with enough resolve that the scholar subsides, however unhappily. "Until then, you know where to find me."

Like the Red Sea, the other students part before them; it has to be Charles's peculiar talent, Erik's sure of it. The tavern door slams shut, leaving them in echoing darkness. Back inside, the students have taken up another drunken song, muffled now by the thick stone of the tavern walls. Other than the two of them and a beggar slumped nearby, the alley is empty. Erik feels the emptiness in his bones and reaches for Charles, who leans wearily against him.

"You weigh far more than you think you do," Erik says. The snap in his voice would have scared anyone else, but Charles only leans more emphatically. Erik has to brace himself and, when he receives directions from Charles, steer them on a course for home. "Why are you here to begin with?"

 _I had hoped for… something else_ , Charles admits, uncharacteristically chagrined. _I'd thought to come back, you know._

How Charles had thought he could return to this, the strange sheltered madness of the schools, after what he had seen – after what the two of them had done – Erik has no idea, and he says as much, with more heat in his voice than his exhaustion should make him capable of.

"Estne propositum tuum in taberna mori?" he asks, when Charles says nothing in reply. That wins a smile at least, although a not very honest one, and a tipsy-sounding _I thought learning Latin drinking songs was beneath you._

"Many things are, but I still do them."

Erik means for Charles to catch the double entendre, the memory of the two of them one night at Charles's house in Constantinople, with Charles's face buried in his pillows, crying out as Erik thrust into him. Charles, for once, is infuriatingly deaf and only hears what he wants to hear: the story of a Jewish scholar who had given up the remnants of what had been taken from him to find and take vengeance on the man who had done the taking.

"Oh my friend," he starts, before trailing off.

It's an effort not to think of Charles's power, a power possessed only by God – to see and speak with a man's hidden soul. What transgressions Charles has seen in him, he's kept to himself.

"I haven't seen any," Charles murmurs. "Ah, turn here; we must go out across the river."

Erik lets himself be directed. Charles is, he thinks, one of the few people who might do such. It's pride, of course, to refuse to submit where submission is demanded (to the authorities, the prophets, the Lord), but Erik is very accepting of his faults. Even Charles is prideful in his own way; why the sudden humility, believing he ought to lock his power away and teach idiot young men their Aristotle, Erik has no idea.

 _Come with me_ , he wants to say, but pride keeps that desire behind his teeth, where it can't do any harm. It's a thought he's held close ever since the two of them had been separated by the mob in Constantinople, since Erik woke up in a synagogue in Pera, brushed off the rabbi's offer of sanctuary and demanded a horse and supplies.

Charles's friend's house near Blachernae had been empty, Charles and Raven long gone, according to the servants. They had given him a direction – Jerusalem – with no little reluctance, and Erik had known not to trust them. So that had begun a journey that ends here, in the quiet rural districts outside the walls, with Charles shuffling along beside him.

Half-carrying him is enough work to keep Erik warm, even as he wonders what exactly the people waiting at – wherever they're going – will think of their master being dragged in like a mouse in the jaws of a cat.

"They're used to it," Charles sighs. He sounds much older now, closer to the fierce-eyed man who had held von Schauen still while Erik sharpened the cross that had hung, glinting brightly, against von Schauen's blood-spattered tabard, while Erik drove the point of it through the skull. "Ah, here we are."

The Hôtel Corbeau shares a small forest with the King's palace at Bois, but where Bois is new-built the Hôtel Corbeau has worn in at the edges, gloomy with its old Norman arrow-slits and crumbling stonework at the corners. Its builders had tucked it into the woods with the trees and ivy growing up thick around it, so its distance from the crowded bustle of Paris seems greater than it is. 

"My mother never liked this place." Charles gazes up at the ramparts, ignoring the scramble of servants, guards, and footmen around them, all of them shocked to find their master staggering arm-in-arm with a stranger up the way. "Of course, she hated England even more."

"Your mother doesn't seem to have liked much in general." She hadn't liked Charles or his adopted sister. Something deep and angry and primitive throbs in Erik, thinking of that; his own mother had sacrificed herself to save him, and his only regret is that he needed so long to avenge her. Charles only gestures to indicate it doesn't matter. Erik scowls at him.

"My lord?" The castellan is, like Charles, short and sturdy, dependability in the set of his shoulders. His sword and the knife at his hip call sweetly to Erik, clear against the dull creak of leather armor. He offers Erik a cursory bow, little more than a nod of a balding head. "We had thought you were staying in the city tonight."

"Change of plans, my old friend. Jean-Luc, you do not know Erik ben Jacob, I believe. We met in Constantinople, during the siege." At this, the castellan's eyes widen and he bows; whether the surprise is for meeting a man from such a distant place or for his master being so intimate with a Jew, Erik can't say. Charles continues, with the casually arrogant obliviousness that makes Erik want to strangle him, "Is Jehanne about? My friend has traveled some distance and needs to rest; he needs rooms prepared."

As if Charles would permit him that, Erik thinks with a snort, as if the _rooms_ aren't a convenient fiction. The slide of warmth through him – through his mind? His soul? – says that Charles has caught the drift of his thoughts, and agrees.

The castellan, on the verge of departing, is delayed by the arrival of the chatelaine, who gives Charles to understand that it will be some minutes before a suitable room is prepared.

"We rarely have visitors," Charles explains once Jehanne departs. "We can pass the time in my study."

Charles's study has a library Erik has not seen outside of the libraries in Spain; even knowing that the volumes are mostly French and Latin, a little Greek Charles had been collecting on his trip in the East, he wants to touch them. Charles lights a few lamps, careful with the flint. The light bouncing off the bronze reflectors is dim, and Charles is a pale wraith moving through it.

Sitting open on two bookstands are a copy of ibn Sina, the _Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb_ and an annotated Latin translation next to it. Erik recognizes the quick lines of Charles's handwriting in the margins. Beside those are Hebrew and Arabic lexicons, stacked on a table. Other texts – on astronomy, algebra, medicine – clutter the desks and shelves, a few lecterns. Erik traces the crisp, black ink of the _Qanun_ ; the crimson rubric at the top indicates this is the chapter on the psychic faculties.

He remembers, abruptly, the first time he had opened the Torah, his hands tiny against the fine satin wrappings. He had been five and his father had, in accordance with the traditions, begun to teach him the Law and his first letters. The memory is small and cozy like his father's library, the two of them pressed close and his father's voice in his ear.

"That's a very lovely memory," Charles says wistful. He's poured wine and water, setting Erik's glass discreetly to the side so he can drink if he wishes. They're close enough that he might as well, Erik decides, and takes up the glass. As he does so, he sees that small platters of food have been laid out. With the alcohol and having walked all day, he's hungry enough to accept the fruit and bread, leaving the meat aside.

"Raven will be sorry to have missed you; she is staying with some friends in the country," Charles says once Erik's had a chance to eat and drink.

"You let her out of your sight?" Erik says with more bite than he really means.

Charles's lovely mouth thins. "It was either that or lose her. I couldn't let that happen, although after you… I suppose perhaps I was too late."

"She wants freedom," Erik says. The aftertaste of apple is sweet in his mouth. "She wasn't made for this," a wave to indicate the castle and all the property that marks Charles's station, the heir to two great houses of England and France, "any more than you were. Any more than I was made to be that scholar, hiding away in Toledo. You know that. Otherwise, why did I find you at that tavern and not here?"

"If I don't know what I am, how do I know what I'm made for?" Charles asks, one of his philosophical questions that makes Erik grind his teeth.

It's an old fight. They had had it the first time in Constantinople, after Charles had dragged Erik from the waters of the Golden Horn, and they'd had it again the night before the day they'd killed von Schauen. Erik has studied the logicians in greater detail than Charles has, but Erik's superior knowledge batters uselessly against the rocks of Charles's resolve. Perhaps, Erik supposes, a man who can see the minds of others must ask the questions Charles feels compelled to ask; even in the West, _know thyself_ has remained a central tenet of philosophy. Erik has never troubled himself much about that question: he knows precisely what he is.

What he is nearly killed him once, but it avenged him. What Charles is had saved him.

 

**Past**

Thirty minutes ago he had been standing atop the Kastellion, the huge tower built into the headland that thrust into the Golden Horn like a finger attempting to touch the thumb of the city across the water. Constantinople had been, and is now, wreathed in smoke, arrows flying like hail through the clouds as the city's defenders struggled to repulse the crusaders. Before that he had been down in the streets of Pera, the Jewish quarter, trying to evacuate the citizens and reaching out, desperately, randomly, with his talent to deflect swords and crush helmets and armor.

Twenty men died once his fear had dwindled in the face of rage, and he thought _this is what the Lord must have felt_ , incandescent with his fury. He'd crushed them in their armor and the exertion had been nothing, not even skimming the surface of the deep well that's rising up inside him. Now his rage has a focus, as if channeled through the glasses made by Arabic craftsmen, pure and concentrated fire in his veins: the ship carrying von Schauen, plowing across the Golden Horn.

Now he is in the water, having flung himself off the dock. No Greek ship will take him, not with the Latins and their vessels pouring into the strait like a flood. The only advantage he has is the great chain that once stretched from the city across the water to the Kastellion, meant to keep invaders from making their way up the strait, and his anger gives him the power of a god – power sufficient to send it against von Schauen's ship.

All he can taste is salt; even the blood from when he'd bitten his tongue earlier has been washed away. The chain under his hands is a living thing, a snake slithering through the chaos of the waves, intent on the ship that's charging across the waves to the harbor of the Prosphorion and the ships anchored in it. He'd ripped the chain and its mooring off the side of the tower and the end is a blunt snakehead of melted iron.

It's enough – more than enough – to batter the ship's hull to splinters. Even through the chaos of the battle around him, he can hear the screams of the sailors. Von Schauen is nowhere to be seen, but that _is_ his ship, its banners flagging now as it loses speed and begins to founder, and Erik _had_ seen the man aboard it once he had finished slaughtering innocent women and children. He yanks hard on the chain where it's wrapped around the bow, and the wood shatters, the heavy bow ornament toppling into the water along with the sailors perched on it. With half the front of the ship amputated, the heavy mast tips perilously, the deck rising up at a steep angle.

A wave slaps him full across the face and drags him down; he comes up choking, spitting out what feels like half the sea.

He clears the salt water from his eyes in time to see the ship founder, the water licking greedily at its sides, higher, higher, fingers curling around the gunwales and dragging it down. His heart leaps, despite the exhaustion creeping up on him, thinking _this is it, he is dead, gone_ – a moment of triumph before something takes him across the back of the head and the world goes as black and still as the grave.

The next thing he knows is warmth and softness, and a gentle hand on his forehead.

"You're in my house – well, more precisely, the house of John Poimenides, a friend of mine." The Greek is horribly accented, enough to give the speaker away as a Westerner – if the fair skin, brown hair, and clear blue eyes hadn't done it first. "We're near the castle at Blanchernae, in the north side of the city."

Erik reaches for his talent, half-afraid it's been burned out of him. It's there, he perceives it, but it's sluggish to respond. His heart rackets with fear.

 _Don't worry_ , and it's not precisely a voice – it isn't Hebrew or German or Arabic, or any tongue that Erik knows. The language the Lord speaks, he thinks irrationally, when he speaks to the hearts of mortals. For a moment he thinks he's dead and – almost as irrationally – spares a bitter thought for not knowing if he's dragged von Schauen down to death with him.

"Nothing so divine, or so permanent." The man, in addition to being a Latin, is rather young and rather short. He reminds Erik of the rabbi who oversaw the _yeshiva_ , vitality compressed so tightly into so small a frame that he spills over at the edges with it. Prosaically, the young man sets a cup of water on the table by Erik's head. Not so prosaically, the cup is malachite in gold, with gems.

 _Shamereni el ki-chasiti vach_ , Erik thinks.

"You're among friends; there's no need for protection." A smile, ineffably kind. "My name is Charles of Westchester. Yes, I am a Latin, but I am… not like the man who destroyed your family. Or the Venetians."

Even though grasping his talent is like holding something through layers of wool, Erik can sense a thicket of swords, spears, and arrows not far away. It's a vast, moving forest, inexorable as it plows through the streets.

"Alexios, the old Emperor, has fled," the stranger – Charles – says, as if Erik actually cares. "The younger Alexios swears he will pay the Crusaders for their trouble if he's raised to co-emperor; the Byzantines don't know that, of course. The city is a storm waiting to break, and it will, sooner or later."

He's settled himself in a chair near Erik's bed, near but not too close. The way he speaks tells Erik he _knows_ with perfect certainty that the populace will revolt. _The price will be more blood_ , Charles says in his silent voice, more a spill of bloody images and fire than words again.

"How can you…" Erik pushes himself up, refusing to be at yet another disadvantage.

"My particular trick?" Charles smiles indulgently. "I wish I knew; I've devoted all my studies to finding out."

It's a thing of G-d, Erik's sure. The Christians would say Charles is a saint ( _Oh, I'm not so sure about that_ , Charles says, the amusement clear), because their saints can do this – see into people's souls, converse with them spirit to spirit. It's clear Charles is not that; he doesn't have the abstemiousness Erik associates with the Church's ideal representatives.

"Maybe I should ask you what you can do instead," he temporizes.

"Oh, many things," Charles says casually. "I can see into minds – or souls; I don't know – and speak to them. I can command people to do what I wish, make them see things that aren't there, or not see things that are." He pauses and adds, "That's how I managed to keep the Latins from killing you, and how I convinced a passing galley to detour and pick you up, then take us far away from the fighting. Or as far as we can get, anyway."

Charles stands; Erik watches, oddly – reluctantly – compelled. With economy, Charles drops some powder into a goblet and pours in something that steams gently and is fragrant, then stirs it with an ivory-handled spoon. His fingers, when he hands the cup to Erik, are warm and soft, but with ink smudges on them.

"A scholar, in my spare time," Charles says, noticing that Erik's noticed. "I've always been looking for answers, and aside from – well – I've not found any. Not until now."

He's found someone like him. _He's found someone like him_. Fear surges up followed, impossibly, by hope. For a moment Erik doubts it's his, because Charles is looking at him with wonder and adoration, as if _Erik_ is the holy one, some miracle of G-d descended from on high to speak with him. But no, it _is_ his – fear, hope, all of it – enough to keep him still for a time, and listen to what Charles has to say.

* * *

A month later, they kill Nikolaus Schmidt von Schauen. He is leading a group of knights in a random pillage of the churches around the Xerolophos, glorying in the destruction and the cries of the nuns as they beg von Schauen and his knights to spare their treasure. Erik has little love and less pity for Christians, but these – the Greeks are helpless, _helpless men and women_ Charles thinks furiously.

 _This isn't God's work_ , Charles's soul says to Erik's. They watch as von Schauen – barely armored, he's that arrogant – brushes off a blow from a Greek soldier and swings his sword so it takes the man in the neck, driving through the coif of chain mail as if through a spiderweb.

It's the last life von Schauen takes. He freezes a heartbeat later, abruptly still in the chaos of the city streets. Beside him, Charles has also gone still, his forehead tight in concentration. With his talent, Erik yanks the cross off its chain around von Schauen's neck and fashions the end of it – the end that had been planted in the dirt on Golgotha – into a fine, killing blade.

When it penetrates von Schauen's skull, Charles cries out. It's a distant sound, for all his pain bores through the back of Erik's head, slotting in behind his ear like a knife.

 

**Now**

Once Erik's room is ready to Jehanne's exacting standards, Erik pays it a brief visit, long enough to wash and change, and send the servant packing. Charles's voice guides him to his room, and the other trickery Charles has makes it so the passing servants don't notice him.

Charles's room is plain, jarring compared to what Erik remembers of his quarters near the Blachernae Palace. The bed is hung in dark blue satin and fur to guard against the perpetual cold of the castle; aside from that, the only furniture is a desk and lectern, the only extravagance is a large fire in the hearth and a pair of oil lamps lit.

Already Charles is in bed, wincing in anticipation of a hangover. He's beautiful, Erik thinks helplessly, pale skin against the rich blue of the coverlet, his skin overpainted with gold from the firelight.

"You're very poetic tonight," Charles says drowsily as he stretches. Erik's throat goes dry.

He reaches for the laces of his tunic – hastily tied, easily undone – and pulls it over his head. Charles's eyes slide half-shut, his mouth curving in a smile that speaks of nothing but pleasure.

They never talk about this, the few times they've lain together. Erik has studied the Law and he knows the prohibitions, but he's also heard the ribald verses about pretty-arsed boys, the more passionate invocations to a beloved, praising his dark hair and eyes, the slenderness of his form. The seventh night they had been together in Constantinople Charles had asked for poetry and Erik had recited a few lines of ibn Abraham, _Beloved, like a scarlet cord his lips_ , feeling supremely foolish, before moving on to comparing Charles's neck to the Pleiades, which did not make Charles laugh or throw him out, as Erik had expected.

 _I have known your sorrows, And reflect on them with grief_ , Charles had said to him, the blush on his cheeks an odd counterpoint to the seriousness of the thought: what he had seen in Erik's memory, the loss and the years of wandering, all of it – even, Erik's breath caught, the preferences that he had kept carefully hidden.

"I thought the Lord sent avenging angels to Sodom for doing what I think of doing to you," Erik had said, because he _had_ over the past week imagined (very much against his will) the precise contours of Charles's body and how he might map them with his fingers.

"I've heard confessions of far worse deeds," Charles had said dismissively. He wasn't a priest; Erik knew, then, how Charles had gotten those confessions. "And what I feel in you… Souls do speak, you know, Erik. They speak truthfully, when they speak to one another. And love is truth, so when souls speak truthfully together, they also speak with love. And love, being truth, cannot be evil, _ergo_ , your soul, speaking desire to me, is both truthful and good. There's nothing evil in it."

"Bodies, though," Erik pointed out, even as his mouth went dry, even as Charles slid into his lap, knees tight to Erik's thighs. His cock pressed urgently against the constriction of trews and tunic.

"An obedient body follows the soul in all things," Charles said with finality, and kissed him into silence.

* * *

The night slowly gives way to dawn. Erik remembers a minnesinger who had come by his village when he'd been a boy, singing of a nightingale warning the lovers that day was coming.

"I wish you would stay," Charles murmurs. He's nothing but warmth in Erik's mind, twined lazily around him.

"There is no place for me here," Erik points out. "I can't own property – indeed, I would _be_ the property of his most royal highness, your Philip Augustus."

"He's not my king," Charles says. "Nor is John, come to that."

"Then why pretend that all of this," Erik gestures to the room, to the treasure glinting dully in the nascent daylight, "means anything? You have power enough that you need only give your loyalty to yourself."

"We shouldn't argue," Charles says, shifting against him. Erik bridles – this is absolutely typical of Charles, unwilling to concede defeat – but all the same his body quickens, annoyance transmuting into desire like lead alchemized to gold. "Stay for a few days at least, _please_."

Erik can feel himself giving way. In a life marked by resolution – to survive, to see von Schauen dead – Charles is the one weak point, the place in the chain where Erik's resolve threatens to break every time. He's searched years for Charles, for what reason he can't articulate (to sleep with him again, to argue with him again, to make sure he's all right), and having him now… Erik isn't used to having what he wants, and he suspects Charles isn't for having, not on the terms Charles seems to want: Erik hiding what he is, _Charles_ hiding Erik the same way he's hidden Raven all these years.

He reminds himself of their differences: Jewish, Christian; lowborn and near-property, aristocrat.

 _Gifted_ , Charles tells him. _What we are._ He twines their fingers together meaningfully, projecting an image of last night into Erik's head.

"Find a way or make one," Charles sighs. He's looking at Erik, but Erik can't quite make himself look back.

"Were diu werlt alle min," Erik says, mostly to himself, stroking the damp curve of Charles's shoulder.

"I am not the Queen of England," Charles mumbles. He leans up a bit, beautifully tousled, lips flushed with Erik's kisses. "Where would we go, then, since we owe loyalty to no one? Thule? The Antipodes?"

"Cloud-Cuckoo Land."

Charles snorts. Erik can't help the happiness that wells up in him. They lie there for a few minutes, Charles's fingers twined in Erik's longer ones, his cheek pillowed on Erik's chest. Charles's thoughts, such as they are, lie comfortably alongside him, as if their minds are two other bodies, sharing their own space.

"To find others like us," Erik says abruptly. 

He hadn't known this was a possibility, not until the words leave his mouth, but in that same instant he _knows_ it, knows this will be the future. Already his thoughts and Charles's mesh together, a tapestry of possibility: taking Raven, finding others with their same gifts, creating a space of safety. Erik's imagination runs in slightly different directions, an unruly horse Charles can't quite successfully rein in, but all the same, it's a future and the two of them together.

"We'll start today?" Charles asks, moving as if to escape from under the covers and call for his horse immediately. He's alight with plans, both for their immediate needs (washing, breakfast, ordering the supplies) and a future: a secluded estate on the western marches of England, tucked into gentle hills, where they and the ones they find can find fellowship and comfort in each other. _Today, Erik._

"Soon," Erik answers, and pulls the two of them close and warm again, until the sun's leading edge peers up over the tops of the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTACK OF THE HISTORICAL NOTES
> 
>  **Notes:** "Tagelied" is set sometime around 1208, four years after the siege of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. The Jewish population of the city suffered heavily both in the initial sieges (1203 and 1204) as well as in the hostilities that surrounded the Crusades in general, which made use of violence or forced conversion against Jewish communities in the Crusaders' paths.
> 
> The _tagelied_ (dawn song) was the German version of the French lyric genre called the _aubade_. As the name implies, the subject is the impending parting of a lady and her knightly lover at daybreak after a night in bed together.
> 
> All the poetry, Latin, German, Hebrew, and Arabic, is real and borrowed from various (roughly) contemporary poets; like many of their educated contemporaries, Charles and Erik would have memorized their favorite passages, and possibly have written some themselves.
> 
> While the medieval church was critical of homosexual activities, poetic love letters to young men that made use of classical/pagan conventions enjoyed some popularity among the educated. (These poems were in Latin and drew on classical themes and images; they have no counterparts in vernacular poetry.) In Islamic Spain, the love ode to a beautiful young man was a popular genre among Muslim and Jewish authors, with several major poets contributing to it.
> 
> Unfortunately, I couldn't find transliterations of the Hebrew and Arabic poetry, so.
> 
>   **Translations and poetry:**
> 
>   _In hoc signo vinces_ : "In this sign you will conquer." According to legend, Constantine I had a vision of the cross (or the chi-ro) before his defeat of Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge on the Tiber (312 AD). Constantine's victory began the process of uniting the Roman Empire under one ruler and the Christianization of the Mediterranean.
> 
>  _fraternitas Goliae_ : "The brotherhood of Golias." The Goliards were university students and graduates who wrote poetry on drinking, sex, and gambling, as well as lampoons of the Church. The collection of poetry now known as the _Carmina Burana_ is considered to be the product of Goliardic poets.
> 
>  _Ave! splendor telluris Anglice… Errant quidem, inmo peccant qui te vocant Anglicum / Et vocalem interponant, et dicant 'angelicum'_ : A combination of two poems by Hilary the Englishman (c. 1125), _To William of Anfonia_ and _To an English Boy_ : "Hail! Glory of the English land… They err – no, they _sin_ – those who say you're English. Rather, have them add the _e_ and say _angelic._ "
> 
>  _Qui nos rodant confundatur_ : From the drinking song "[In taberna quando sumus](http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmlyr.php#track14)" (When We're in the Bar): "Let whoever insults us be damned." The response the students give is the next line, _Et in iustis non scribuntur_ (and let their names not be written in the book of the just). From _Carmina Burana_.
> 
>  _Estne propositum tuum in taberna mori?_ Adapted from the _Confession_ of the Archpoet (early/mid 1100s): "Do you mean to die in a bar?" (The original line is _Meum est propositum in taberna mori_ , "It is my purpose to die in a tavern"). From _Carmina Burana_.
> 
>  _Beloved, like a scarlet cord his lips_ : From a poem to a young man by Isaac Ibn Abraham, trans. Norman Roth.
> 
>  _He wounds me, whose neck is the Pleiades_ : From a poem to a young man by ibn Gabirol, trans. Norman Roth.
> 
>  _I have known your sorrows / And reflect on them with grief_ : From a verse letter (written in Latin) from the scholar Walafrid Strabo to his friend Liutger.
> 
>  _[Were diu werlt alle min](http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmlyr.php#track10)_ : Another _Carmina Burana_ song, this one in German: "If all the world belonged to me." Charles's reply is a reference to the final lines, in which the speaker says he will sacrifice all of it, "daz diu chunegin von Engellant / lege an minen armen" (that the Queen of England might lie in my arms).


	3. Billets-doux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One time he had drunk absinthe, licking the sugar and anise off Erik's lips while Emma and the others gathered around them laughed and encouraged them. That moment had nearly overpowered him with delight; he thinks doing this, dipping his fingers into so much vibrancy, may be even better.
> 
> And he has a letter in his pocket, Charles reminds himself, the paper pressed against his chest, underneath jacket and waistcoat. The thought makes him quicken his step, even if Erik would have something mocking to say about someone so short trying to hurry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pocky_slash asked for epistolary fic and afrocurl asked for more Downton Abbey crossover. This is not precisely epistolary, nor is it precisely crossed over with Downton Abbey, but there is a letter and it does take place in the same 'verse as [A café of one's own](http://archiveofourown.org/works/282638). You don't need to read that to understand this fic; all you need to know is that it's 1923 and Charles and Erik are going to change the world.
> 
> Pairings: Charles/Erik  
> Warnings: Explicit sex  
> Advertisements: historical AU, still have powers, dirty sexy letters, masturbation, light/implied bondage/domination

**Billets-doux**

It's not that Charles begrudges Erik's absence, precisely. Their joint work in advancing the interests of the adaptives, and Erik's concurrent interests in challenging the empires that hang grimly on to their past glory means that, perforce, they must spend time apart. Every now and then Charles returns to England to reassure his mother he hasn't been murdered – not that she seems to care much, his continual exploits and the papers' coverage of them worry her much more – and goes to America to see Raven, and these are trips Erik, when in the grip of obsession, does not take with him.

The ones they _do_ take together, locked in Charles's stateroom… well. Charles smiles brightly at a young woman passing him, brightly enough for her to blush and turn her head away – even as she glances at him from under demurely-lowered lashes. He takes a moment to enjoy this fleeting privacy, the wordless communication of his attention and her shy pleasure, before returning to the world again.

Paris throbs with life, as urgently vital as it had been before the war. Moreso, Charles thinks, like a heart hurrying to make up for lost time, straining to flush the body full of life again. When he'd been a boy, protecting himself against this – the perpetual crush of minds against him, crowded closer than bodies – but now, with his control so finely honed he can dart in and out of those minds, plucking sights, sounds, memories, impressions, anything he wishes out of them.

One time he had drunk absinthe, licking the sugar and anise off Erik's lips while Emma and the others gathered around them laughed and encouraged them. That moment had nearly overpowered him with delight; he thinks doing this, dipping his fingers into so much vibrancy, may be even better.

And he has a letter in his pocket, Charles reminds himself, the paper pressed against his chest, underneath jacket and waistcoat. The thought makes him quicken his step, even if Erik would have something mocking to say about someone so short trying to hurry.

The letter has been there for the better part of the morning while he's made the rounds. Coffee with a clutch of American expatriates had dragged into lunch and then drinks, and then a trip to the Place Saint-Suplice to speak with yet another American, this one a journalist who had sat patiently through Charles's prognostics on the future, her flowing dress bright against the stones of the fountain where they'd been sitting and the pigeons swirling around her feet.

There is so much to say, _too_ much. Charles rather fears he'd overwhelmed her – she'd left looking glassy-eyed. If Erik had been there, he would have said "Oh, you have another acolyte," in a tone too dry to be called jealous, but the spark would have been in his eyes all the same, enough to melt Charles's bones and his resolve to work for the rest of the day.

Erik isn't here, though, and without his obsession having them chase down anarchists and adaptives from morning to midnight, Charles can be lazy for once. He makes himself invisible to the few people who know him enough to demand conversation – Alex Summers and Sean Cassidy, the Lady Mary Crawley (who really does not need to be shielded, she's that engrossed in her journal) – and hurries down the last stretch of the rue de Fleurus.

He keeps apartments at Le Meurice – nothing too ostentatious, enough that his mother won't be embarrassed to send letters there. When Erik's with him he checks his mail with the concierge perhaps once every other week. (They're too busy otherwise; at times he makes Erik go to appreciate his rough, contrary beauty against all that refinement). 

The important address, though, is this one, with its old stone façade and Baroque sculpture above the door and icing the windows, and the third floor.

At last he turns into that address, trotting past the bored doorman and a Bohemian lady who's come – ah, to inquire after friends who live on the second floor. Charles takes the stairs two at a time, creating a racket that irks the friend (just coming out of her apartment now) and not really caring about it. His hands are clumsy on the keys as he takes them from his pocket, worse with the lock.

How Erik would laugh to see Charles so clumsy, to see him hurrying through the front rooms and down the hall, past the art and the piles and piles of books and letters, to the small bedroom they keep for themselves in the back. It's small because Erik had insisted the place was too much extravagance as it was when Charles had rented it, but Charles knows Erik and knows he likes the closeness required by the small bed, so the two of them must twine close together and stay like that for the night.

Small bed or no, it's more luxury than Erik would like, but it's less than Charles is used to – a compromise, in a relationship that swings like a mad pendulum under the influence of two idealists. Erik scoffs when Charles calls him that, but he _is_ , no less than Charles: his ideals guide his actions as much as Charles's do his. While Charles can't agree with Erik in all particulars, if Erik were less passionate, Charles might not find himself drawn to Erik the way he is.

Oh, who is he trying to have on; there are many, _many_ parts of Erik he loves, some of them more carnally than others.

He drops gracelessly onto the bed – their bed, distressingly half-empty – and kicks his shoes off. They hit the floor as he slides a thumb under the fold of the envelope and pries it open. By the time he has the paper unfolded and out, he's stretched across his side of the bed, trembling with anticipation.

Charles ignores the date and the address, but spares a moment to trace a finger over the familiar script in the salutation. It even _looks_ swift, the letters hurried along by Erik's impatience.

> My beloved:
> 
> I sit here on my thin mattress, in a hotel room that overlooks the Potsdamer Platz. I have my cock in my hand, stroking it idly as I look up at the ceiling; I imagine instead of the light I see you kneeling astride me, looking down at me. You are naked; I am touching one of your hips, molding my fingers to that perfect subtle curve. If I were to slide my hand back ever so little, I could palm your lovely arse, my darling. How much would you like that, dearest love, if I stroked the flawless round of it with fingers light as gossamer – or if I dug my fingers in and bruised it like an apple, so later I could lick over and soothe the flesh I so grievously offended? And how would you like it if I slid my finger into you ever so slowly, so slowly you perhaps did not notice it at first because you would be too entranced by my tongue tracing the head of your cock?

(Oh god that night, they had kept the windows open and God only knew what the neighbors had thought if they had seen. Charles had removed the censure from their memories and left only blurs of two bodies twisted ecstatically together. But that night he had rocked slowly into Erik's mouth, his prick sliding along the plush cradle of Erik's tongue, and those lovely, lovely fingers had loosened him in burning, perfect fractions as Erik sucked him.)

Charles licks his lips, eyes sliding half-shut, still enough to read the letter. He knows this expression of his, the one Erik loves best: the sweet, golden boy transforming into something wanton.

> I've heard you moan like the pretty slut you are for me, so I know you would love it. There are times when I listen to you talk to the other revolutionaries, the artists, the idiots who have no conception of your brilliance, and I think you are most eloquent when you can't speak, either when I've gagged you (when I've licked and nibbled your throat, just over your voicebox, to taste the vibrations before they can become speech) or when I'm fucking you up that gorgeous arse of yours and you moan and whine so sweetly.
> 
> The city is rainy tonight. Outside my window the Schulgartenstraße is a blur of yellow and black. I can hear the voices: the people of Berlin are not easily conquered by the weather, there is so much to do. Of course I could join them; there are _my_ people among that number, for certain. There is still work to do, despite the hour and weather.
> 
> But I will stay here, watching my cock swell between my fingers. Do you miss it, Charles? I know I miss being inside you, the sweet, slick clutch of your body, always tight as a virgin despite your knowing what to do to bring me off. The first time we lay together I knew you were not pure, of course, but as I watched that blush mantle your cheeks and spread sweetly down your neck to flow out across the floodplain of your chest, I could pretend. Even when you touched me fearlessly, and whispered into my ear that you dreamed of having me fuck you, of having me come in you (and how you would touch yourself, imagining your fingers – how inadequate! – to be my prick), I could triumph somehow.

Charles presses a palm to his own cock, aching against the placket of his trousers. He shivers once, hard, the arousal working down his spine to the tips of his toes, spreading through to every nerve ending. He spreads his legs slightly, enough that he can slide his fingers into the crease between leg and groin and cup himself.

> As I lie here, you are rocking slowly into my mouth. You want more, of course you do, but you can have only what I choose to give: the tip of your cock, a few inches of it, my tongue glancing lightly round it or the full warmth of my mouth. I love the way you taste, better than wine. I would drink all of you, I _will_ , when I allow you to come. But for now your body remains obedient to the hands I have on you, the sweat glazing your skin so you are haloed with a light that is not holy, but is lascivious: it slides along you as close as I wish to be, clinging to every line of you. It even has the temerity to brush your nipples (oh, your lovely nipples, sweeter than a girl's; I could write odes about them, if I wanted to waste time writing poetry instead of tonguing them and making you scream and press up into me when I bite them) and the ridge of your collar bone where your passionate sweat collects.
> 
> Later I will turn us over so you are beneath me, your legs spread so I can settle between them, and the light will have you no longer, my darling.

Charles would be embarrassed by the whine that escapes him if anyone were around to hear it. He has his own cock out now, a sloppily-licked palm running along the length of it, drawing the foreskin back to expose the sensitive head, flicking a nail along the underside for the acute pleasure of it. Erik would make it slow, of course, the magnificent weight of his shoulders and chest pressing Charles down into the bed while one hand confidently took him apart. _Yes_ , it would be slow and Charles would whisper his desire straight into Erik's head, allowing him to see and feel what Charles saw and felt, and the tension in his spine that gathers and gathers, held in check only by that slow, maddening pace.

He rocks up into his hand, although it's an effort to keep it slow, an effort to focus on the paper trembling in front of him.

> I turn you over on your stomach, my love, to inspect the wings of your shoulder blades as they row together when you try to push yourself up on your elbows to ask me what I think I'm doing. You _know_ what I think, of course, because I give it to you: my mouth traveling down your spine, a pleasant journey to the cleft of your arse – the two dimples above it are oases, where I can drink in your sweat and your smell. I lick those four spots where my fingers so cruelly abused you – they're warm, warmer than the rest of you; I can sense the iron in the blood rushing up to the skin, to fill the places where you have broken apart.
> 
> The humid space between your legs – ah, I could spend forever there. Your balls, the beginning of your prick as it curves up (and oh, you're rutting against the sheets, you whore – you utterly delightful creature), the little hole I've only begun to open. It needs slicking, though, before you can hope to take me without pain…

"Oh god Erik, yes." He _is_ that moment now, the intimate slickness of Erik's tongue between the cheeks of his arse, himself pressing back into it and begging shamelessly for more. Erik gives it to him, a heady wave of lust and intoxication, his hands pushing Charles wider so he can work himself in yet more deeply. 

When he comes, after a few more shaking, careless strokes, he comes across his waistcoat, the splashes of it pale against the gray pinstripe. His mind shudders in the grip of orgasm and memory, caught between the pleasure Erik's words have just pulled out of him and the memory of that night, when he'd come into the sheets with four of Erik's fingers buried in him and Erik kissing the last few knobs of his spine, his mind singing victory songs in Charles's head.

> Now (and I mean here, in Berlin) I am thrusting hard up into my own palm, imagining that it's you I'm fucking. With my eyes shut I see you boneless and yielding underneath me – but not passive, no, never that. Your face is turned to the side, enough that I can see just the edges of your smile and the haze in your stained-glass eyes, and then you _move_ against me, pushing up onto my cock so I slide in deep as can be.
> 
> I must gather you to me, dearest, and crush you against my body as I plow into you. No one else can have you, Charles – not the world, not the others in our circle. You are mine.
> 
> _I am_ you say in my head, in the language that is the language of pure knowing.

(Here Erik's writing changes; it no longer has the swift, fluid gait of before.)

> (Oh, I've come – I've spilled all over my own hand. If you were here, I would rub it into your skin, so I could smell the bitter salt of it on you later. After you washed it off (or perhaps you would keep it on…?) it would still remain, an invisible mark.)
> 
> You are so full of come now, my darling; I fancy I can feel it, sticky around my trembling, still-hard prick. I stay in you for a time – god you are so full, so tight, so hot, you are flawless – and wish I could fuck you like this forever, keep you tied down with the metal rungs of the bed and have you forever. Even knowing the impossibility, I wish for it. When I pull out, some of my come drips out of you and lies against the damp sleekness of your thigh. I should lick it up, I think, but instead I tuck my face into your neck, right where your hair curls, where the skin is so tender, and breathe, and listen to you breathe.

Charles has to set the letter down and undress, not from the desire to start another round – that's pretty much wrung out of him, still – but from comfort. He's nearly sweated to death in his suit and the close warmth of the bedroom as it is, and his laundress will be distressed by the state of his trousers (disgracefully wrinkled) and waistcoat (best not think about that for now). Undressing is awkward, as he does not yet trust his legs enough to stand, but he manages it, keeping only the pocket-watch, Erik's pocket-watch, for himself.

He sets the letter on Erik's pillow and curls up and, through, sleep heavy eyes, reads the last paragraph.

> I wonder how it is I have not tainted you with my darkness, that I have not broken you. I have wanted you like I've wanted nothing else in my life, not even the end of the regimes that daily oppress the innocent, not even the rise of our own superior species. Perhaps this is because you are the one thing I have wanted for myself. That first night, I thought I would have broken you with how much I wanted you, but like some unearthly iron, you only became stronger. Whatever darkness I have doesn't sully you – not that you are innocent (as you remind me daily), but still… I want to beg to ruin you. When I return, I may be desperate enough to do that.
> 
> The work here proceeds quickly, but not quickly enough. Look for me in a week; do not look to be let out of bed for at least three days after my return. You've taught me indolence, my love; I must show you how well I've studied. I will have you with your legs hooked over my shoulders, with you astride me and riding my cock until you've lost all rhythm and your ecstasy is an endless tumble in my head, with you tied down by whatever metal I can find…
> 
> These are not the possibilities I imagined when you first pulled me out of the Seine. But they are delightful to imagine, are they not?
> 
> Sleep well, my love.
> 
> E.

(Charles does.)


	4. Algebra and code

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (As a child, Erik Lehnsherr had seen a trinary system from the observation deck of the _Magda_.
> 
> The system itself was not extraordinary, but it had lodged itself indelibly in a six-year-old's memory. His mother had explained it to him, that the three stars were bound to each other; the least dense of them, its gassy halo blurring at the edges, was slowly being torn apart by its larger neighbors and eventually would not exist.
> 
> He himself would be that star, tugged between two opposing forces, held in balance by them until, improbably, one day they both dissolved and he found himself adrift.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Remy LeBeau (comics)  
> Warnings: AU - still have powers, apparent(???) character death (referenced), angst, pining  
> Advertisements: Mutant space opera, Erik being an angstbucket, nostalgia
> 
> This is the beginning of an idea I've been kicking around, more a teaser than anything else. Because I will have SO MUCH TIME starting in September, I decided to sign up for BigBang (excellent decision making, I has it), and I'm trying to get ideas straight in my head for things I can do. The world is a hodgepodge of a bunch of different SF conventions, but it probably owes the most to CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe. And of course Star Trek.
> 
> Um, tomorrow's update will probably be something silly and light for once.

**Algebra and code**

**Teaser: Crossroads**

> In PM Year 908, humans took their first major steps to extraterrestrial colonization. These were not the fumbling attempts made by the old nations to explore Luna, but the establishment of the first colonies on and above Mars, the fourth planet from Old Sol and the one most similar to Terra. Even as those colonies thrived, however, there was no large-scale movement to push beyond the boundaries of Sol System I, with efforts instead focused on terraforming rather than exploration and travel… [I]t would not be until nearly a thousand years later with the beginning of what scholars now call the Second Great Diaspora that the first of twenty ships in the first convoy, the _Magda_ , ignited its relativistic engines and left the regions of known space behind.
> 
> – _A Song in Exile: Jewish Identity and the Second Great Diaspora_ , by M. K. Perl of the _Ariel_ ( _Ariel_ Archives SCO2-0914)

(As a child, Erik Lehnsherr had seen a trinary system from the observation deck of the _Magda_. 

The system itself was not extraordinary, but it had lodged itself indelibly in a six-year-old's memory. His mother had explained it to him, that the three stars were bound to each other; the least dense of them, its gassy halo blurring at the edges, was slowly being torn apart by its larger neighbors and eventually would not exist.

He himself would be that star, tugged between two opposing forces, held in balance by them until, improbably, one day they both dissolved and he found himself adrift.)

His money and endurance ran out when he reached 289-AAS/Crossroads.

A joke ran in spacer circles: if you got stuck on Crossroads Station, you made a deal with the devil to get the hell out. The joke had worn thin, and most people had forgotten the old lore about devils and summonings anyway. _Hell_ remained as a purely abstract concept, visualized by the more fervent either as the furnace of a ship's trans-relativistic engines or the deep dark of the gravity pools. Erik's own people had never believed in Hell; _Sheol_ was, as it had always been, to lie in death-sleep under the earth.

 _Earth_ , though – that was almost as fantastic as eternal flames and darkness. The mind recoiled from the prospect of spending any time planet-tied, let alone forever, let alone to be _beneath_ it and dissolved in it.

Crossroads Station was asteroid-adjacent, a disk of battered metal anchored to an ageing star. On occasion, wandering asteroids buffeted it, leaving behind dents that (depending on their severity) went unrepaired. It survived, as most AA-stations did, on mining – or, rather less on mining than on the black market that thrived in corners where the Federates couldn't reach. A few ships came by each week, raggedy long-haulers and low-rated company ships (manned by crews patched-together and _paid_ for their loyalty, which stuck in Erik's craw), and from what he could tell by the activity dockside, most of what went into their holds wasn't refined metal or even ore, but other, less legal goods entirely.

"You looking to ship out?" asked a man in working ship's greys. He gestured to a gantry, which smoked and steamed with melting ice and swarmed with personnel. "A thousand aurii gets you back to civilization." He tried a smile; his teeth glinted slick and repulsive in the fluorescents.

The patch on the man's left arm had only the ship name, _Fairway_ , and the company logo that indicated the _Fairway_ was on government contract with the Federates. He wore no family crest or filial marker, or anything that said he belonged to more than a Federate-controlled company ship that had to hire on its help and gave its profits to people growing fat station-side. Erik had long since taken his own patches off, two sets now, for two ships gone and given over to the void, and easily imagined what the company man saw: a worn-out stationsider or transient, an illegal by the look of him, and down on his luck either way.

"Hey, buddy," the man tried again. Two copper chips glinted on his collar: a lieutenant, with ranking enough to make a transport offer to a stranger and not have to clear it with his captain first. "You been starin' down that hatch for an hour now. You want on or not?"

"Not," Erik said flatly.

"Then fuck off."

Erik did fuck off, only because it was either that or be arrested for punching the company lieutenant in the face, or – the idea was suddenly, viscerally appealing – blowing out the _Fairway_ 's gate in the docking bay. The ceramic plating that shielded the station from radiation was undergirded with tensor-steel, easy enough for him to push out until the ceramics fractured; the steel rings securing the pressurized tubing that led from the _Fairway_ 's main bay to the docking hatch would give way with only a flicker of effort. He could even play hell with the failsafes, keep the force fields from kicking in long enough to be sure this man and some of his crewmates were caught in the decompression.

Walking back to his hostel did little to burn off the anger: it raged as clearly, as keenly, as it had before Charles had come along with his quiet words and the memories to cool that anger into serenity. Imagining the _Fairway_ 's useless, Family-less crew sucked out into space kept the anger at a simmer, with Erik too keenly aware of how little that would solve, how helpless he was and how alone again. It had, he told himself, nothing to do with how disappointed Charles would be.

Or maybe, Erik thought as he stalked into his room, it was to do with the short walk: dockside hostels were the cheapest, close as they were to the clang and barely-controlled disorder of the ship-bays and the mooring points. Overhead, the rickety intra-station tram ferried ship captains and important guests to the glitz and comfort of Alpha-Section, or what glitz and comfort A-Sec could afford in a station like Crossroads. Down here in Delta, all was squalor and desperation, and in Erik's room a comscreen that died more often than not, and when it lived played slurred pornographic videos. Erik ignored the jiggling, neon breasts on the screen, and the garbled demand on the intercom to not slam his damn door, and collapsed into bed.

D-Section hostels never had windows; the Dawnsider's proprietor had guffawed when Erik had asked about it. ("What do you think we are, A-Sec? Aren't _we_ fancy!") In the thin light he summoned from the wall panel, he could see the room closing in around him, sense the utter stillness that was Crossroads Station in its perpetual orbit, driven only by gravity and not the pervasive hum of sublight or trans-rel engines. Back on _Magda_ he had had a port in his quarters – small, but his, a mark of his place in the family – and Charles's study on _Solyma_ had had a great bank of windows that gazed out fearlessly into the darkness that enveloped them.

That study had been positioned starboard midship, sheltered by the outswept wings. It meant, of course, only seeing the startrails as they sped away, the path _Solyma_ had carved through space, but Charles had never seemed to mind. _One must see where one's been, to see the future_ , he said, when Erik had remarked on it, and the earnestness with which he'd said it had kept it from being the ridiculous cliché that it was.

Now, alone and in the silent cell of his room… _Trapped_ , he thought reflexively. Telling himself that being stuck dirtside would be even worse failed to help.

He had gone six jumps before his savings ran down to a trickle, enough to make staying on anywhere a tenuous proposition. The final jumps had been on under-staffed freighters who had wanted to hire him on or exchange work for passage, no questions asked and clearly illegal as he was. Everything in him had revolted at that; he'd paid his fare and locked himself in his berth. He had no papers, no visa, not even a passport; his patches for _Magda_ and _Solyma_ would get him no more than pitying looks or maybe charity, and Erik wanted neither of those things.

Mostly he wanted to die, or destroy and destroy and _destroy_ until there was nothing left of himself or anything else. How the universe might contain this much rage, Erik didn't know; how a human body might contain it – perhaps _that_ was his power, to hold all this fury inside him instead of using it to tear the world apart. In the silence of his room, it pressed in on itself and condensed to a perfect, hard, heavy point beneath his ribs. Around him, the metal of the station resonated dully, and rang against the borders of the spaces where another mind, threaded comfortably through his own, used to live.

He could rip the entire station to pieces. Erik closed his eyes and reached for breath that stubbornly refused to come. Calm, calm, _calm_ , serenity was the fulcrum, the still point for him to turn on until the worst of _despair-anger-helplessness_ passed by. The old memory came, of lighting candles in the ship's temple, and that light being the only light in the room save for the stars through the viewing windows. The shipglass redoubled the candles' light, and it had glowed softly gold and illuminated his mother's face.

 _Damn you, Charles_. Even gone, Charles had insinuated himself into every fold of Erik's brain, a ghost refusing to be exorcised. He shut his eyes tight and turned his face into the pillow, as if turning away from memory.

Charles's voice followed him.

* * *

( _Do you know what Solyma means?_ Charles asks. His lips move against Erik's shoulder, but Erik hears the words more in his mind than not. _You should_. When Erik shakes his head, Charles smiles and licks teasingly across Erik's collar bone before kissing him. _It's pre-Migration Greek, a translation of the Ancient Hebrew word_ salem _. It means –_ )

* * *

The station had taken its name from the Roads, three interconnecting routes for interstellar travel that converged on the station's anchor-star. In the old days, they'd used the star as the fulcrum to give primitive trans-rel engines the boost they needed to kick over the faster-than-light barrier, the slingshot method that had been used by spacefarers since time immemorial. As technology developed and ships could transition from their sublights to TREs as easy as changing gears, the Roads fell into disuse, and Crossroads into obscurity.

When he'd first set foot on the station, Erik had seen the faded hints, here and there, of what Crossroads had been, the synthwood and plaster meant to mimic the materials and textures of First-Earth. In the years since he'd last been there, stationers had torn most of that out and replaced it with plastics, and moved the last traces of elegance to A-Sec, leaving the station's bones bare in some places. He hadn't paid much attention last night, but in a distant, disinterested way, noticed the changes now.

That morning, hungover from exhaustion and emptied of grief, Erik rented a SPS and found his way up to E-Sec. The Dawnsider's lump of a proprietor had taken perverse glee in overcharging Erik for the unit, knowing that the station-positioning system was the only way anyone not familiar with Crossroads could get around. Crossroads had been built before the Stationers' Guild had standardized design and regulations – before, Erik suspected, such thoughts had ever crossed the Guild's mind – and showed its age in its rambling corridors, one-way traffic streets, and five hundred code violations Erik could sense without trying. At some point, an administrator had tried half-heartedly to bring Crossroads into line with the new spec, and so Epsilon-Section, usually the section dedicated to servicing the needs of permanent or semi-permanent station residents, had been shoehorned into the old shuttle terminal that lay halfway between dockside and stationside. The employment offices occupied what had once been a bay for spare parts.

The officer behind the desk looked up at his entrance and seemed caught between staring at Erik and glancing at the clock in consternation.

"You're open at oh-eight hundred standard, right?" Erik demanded.

"Yes?" The officer's – the _girl_ 's – voice broke and spiked upward into a question. Erik gritted his teeth. "Um, can I help you with anything?"

"The Intranet was advertising a piloting position yesterday." Erik thrust his CV-chip at her; the girl took it gingerly, her arm snapping back behind the safety of the desk. "All my cred is on there," he added as the girl inserted the chip into her reader. He waited as she scanned it, hands still on the worn formica of the counter, acutely aware of the hiss of recycled air and the pressing unreality of station life. Outside, a few stationers peered curiously in before hurrying on their way.

"You'll need to talk to Hiring Foreman Rane?" the girl said after a moment and a flurry of button-pressing. "I've sent him your credentials and he'll – ah, he'll get back to you? He's out of the office right now, but he'll be back in after orientation for some new staff. So, this afternoon maybe? Is there a number he can reach you at?"

Erik needed a moment to realize that last was a true question, and gave the girl his com number scribbled on a piece of hardcopy. The girl attached it to her desk with a piece of tape and sat down, huddled behind the terminal. Erik made an impatient noise and left.

That afternoon, Hiring Foreman Rane called him in for an interview. This was not surprising: Erik had financed his pursuit of Shaw and _Caspartina_ on the strength of the skills he'd learned as _Magda_ 's junior pilot, running in-system hauls and occasionally passenger transport. He'd come close to _Caspartina_ once that way, carrying a member of the Wyngarde _familia_ to a party hosted by Shaw at Caribe Station. That had been the closest he'd come until the time he'd almost died, and Charles.

Rane didn't particularly care about that. "You don't have anything listed for the past year. You been ashore?"

"No, just not piloting."

"And you thought you'd take a refresher course out here in the rocks." Rane regarded him narrowly, gimlet eyes almost vanished under folds of skin. Erik imagined what was going through the foreman's head: prison, more than likely, or that Erik had been lying about not being dirtside, or that he'd been piloting but for something sketchy enough to stay off the official records. When Erik said nothing else, Rane sighed. "You got references?"

"On the chip."

"They check out and you pass a drug test, you got the job." Rane leaned back. His chair, covered with mining dust, squeaked in protest; Rane was not a slight man. "I hope you don't do stims, the last guy I had tweaked out on them and took himself and half a million aurii in vibranium into the side of a rock."

It was clear which one Rane considered the greater, more affecting loss. "I've never had any use for them," Erik said.

"Then I might have a use for you." Rane heaved himself to his feet in a cloud of dust and a shower of rock particles. A sweaty paw enveloped Erik's hand, leaving behind a smear of gray. "You hear from me tomorrow by noon, and you're hired. You don't, you can figure it out."

He got the job in the end, accepted it with more resignation than relief, and moved himself and his duffel bag from the Dawnsider to the station company quarters. The room there was even smaller than the cage of his hotel, but at least made no pretensions to civility, with a single bunk, a table, chair, and a washroom that could barely accommodate Erik's shoulders. Pilot's prerogative, Rane said as he stood in the doorway like a damn concierge. Everyone else bunked double, triple for unskilled workers and illegals who couldn't complain too much.

The next morning, Erik stalked silently out of his room precisely on time, ate in the mess at his own table and ignored the prodding of memory, how he'd spend time in Ororo's greenhouse (the old-fashioned word for hydroponics). Crossroads had limited growing facilities; he'd already had cause to wince at the price for anything that hadn't been processed into protein extracts or powder. Pilots and ship techs ate better than the miners, but that wasn't saying much.

His shipmates left him alone as they boarded. Erik told himself he should be _glad_ to be back at the helm, even on a fourth-rate asteroid skimmer. Compared to _Solyma_ or to _Magda_ , though… _no_. Erik disengaged the docking clamps with a growl and, barely remembering protocol, broadcasted his demand for the crew to strap in.

Two lifetimes ago he had done asteroid runs on one of _Magda_ 's deep-field jumps. They had happened across an uncharted, unclaimed cluster and scanners had turned up vibranium, and Erik had spent three weeks playing chicken with the asteroids in between runs to pick up the miners. It had not endeared him to Josef, the engineer in charge of the work shuttles, and the first time out had earned him a fearsome dressing-down from his mother. The second time out, after a grounding that still made him wince with embarrassment, he had gone out as a glorified sensor, not allowed anywhere near the controls but instead made to practice with his abilities, learning to sense the intonation of different metals from across space.

And in the last lifetime… He had taken Charles out a few times, when Charles could "stop pretending to be the captain" (as he said) and Erik had decided he'd finished terrorizing the juniors for the day.

Before Erik could stop himself, he began to play with the memory of that first time, Charles's delighted, undignified yelps as Erik had taken them twisting and diving through the Genosha Proxima field, threatening Erik with bodily harm if he crashed them but not really meaning it because he had been _there_ , woven into Erik's cortex and seeing the field lit up with strands of iron, adamantium, and other metals, a living map through which Erik guided them.

 _You are marvelous, my friend_ , Charles had said to him, blue eyes bright and cheeks flushed with excitement, his unabashed smile suddenly softening into something that made Erik's treacherous heart skip.

Static burst over his comm line, followed by, "Hey, cap'n," are we going today or tomorrow?" 

_Fuck_. Erik snarled something at the idiot on the other end.

After that, he concentrated on the step-by-step of piloting the skimmer out of the stationside harbor and following the mining tech's directions to their quadrant for the day. The work was mindless: drop one group of miners off at one asteroid, move onto the second and then the third… and then wait until one group commed back with a request to upload the ore they'd extracted, or with a question for the mining tech. Or, after an age of tedium, lunch and then their one afternoon break and, finally, the chime that the tech told Erik meant everyone got to go home.

Night passed in a vague solitude. The walls of his berth – bunk, he supposed, stationside – were thin plastic panels, temporary things turned permanent, so he heard the techs snoring on the other side before he could scratch his way into sleep. What he dreamed of, and what he pictured in the still, inert darkness before sleep, he refused to let himself think about, no matter how fierce the ache under his heart in the mornings. 

And that was his life, pulled along by the inertia of simple movement – no rest, no peace, not for him – until nearly a month had passed stationside.

The monthly off-station shipments were, Erik rapidly discovered, a headache of monumental proportions. They were so obnoxious he almost _enjoyed_ it, a spike of irritation breaking like lightning through the endless sameness of station life. Station regs forbade pilots from leaving their ships while waiting to direct-load their haul onto the barges, and Erik – detained by Cash the engineer's failure to diagnose a faulty thruster – had to hurry to be third last in line. It meant an hour of planning ways to make Cash suffer, remembering harassing and terrifying Cassidy in the pilot training simulations by pulling loops and turning off the g-field at the apexes – a way to convince Cassidy to control his damned ceramics-shattering voice and use it to stabilize a craft in an out-of-control roll.

By the time he signed off on his shipment and submitted to the detox scans (which were thinly-veiled excuses to make sure the employees weren't smuggling ore out; even a few grams of the stuff would have been enough to get them out of this limbo, and Erik could have managed it if he'd been tempted), he had a headache and an appetite confused by nausea into not wanting anything to eat. The thought of eating in the mess was intolerable – he saw enough of his crew on a daily basis, and the rest of the workers didn't seem inclined to make friends or conversation – but the thought of his cramped quarters made him itch under his skin.

He ended up, more from lack of direction than conscious choice, at a booth in the back of B-Sec's only bar, the Lattimore. The bar's namesake had been enshrined above the alcohol collection in a holopainting that flickered in and out of existence; the patrons had a similar insubstantiality in the cigarette smoke and hazy darkness.

B-Sec buzzed quietly with news Erik tried to ignore as he keyed in his order and station ID. A ship had come in, a real long-hauler, although no one was quite sure what its business was. It had put its wares up on the station's Intranet and a few takers had nibbled on it – nutritional seaweed from Umi-IV, mostly, and solar panels – but nothing that justified a big ship taking the roads all the way out here.

 _Smuggling, you dumb shits_ , Erik thought, and frowned at the glass of warm beer the auto-waiter spat out at him. The plate of reconstituted chicken it disgorged five minutes later made Erik regret turning down the mess.

"As I live n' breathe, _quelle surprise_ an' all dat, it be Erik Lehnsherr."

He knew that voice and hadn't thought ever to hear it again. Erik reached for the knife and fork, felt them ready to his power, and braced himself.

"Did they finally exile you from decent society, Remy?"

Remy LeBeau grinned. "Was never a part of it, _mon ami_."

"Then you won't mind if I tell you to fuck off before you regret it." Erik let the knife drift a few inches from Remy's unprotected wrist, alert for the slightest movement; LeBeau was demonically swift, and his ability meant that knife could easily become a weapon against Erik. He felt over Remy's body for more metal, found a few promising pressure points where he could exert himself.

"Inn't a da- _ham_ shame, we almost missin' each other like dis, like we be stars, frens true-blue an' all." Remy coughed and smirked in response to Erik's glare. "Sorry, I know you ain't one for shiptalk. Is this better?"

"Quite." Ship dialects were grating to everyone except the ship in question.

"I expect you're wondering what I'm doing here." Remy, wholly uninvited, folded himself into the seat across from Erik, a sharp-toothed grin for the knife the only acknowledgment he gave it.

"Not particularly." Erik ferociously tamped down the thought that Remy had a ship, a proper long-range ship, and maybe a need for competent crew. 

"Oh, you know, I've been here and there," Remy said blithely. In the dim light of the bar, his eyes glowed red and wicked. "Found it a good idea to lay low for a while."

"Piss off that wife of yours again?" Erik asked, not really caring.

Remy's smirk dissolved into a thoughtful expression and the curl of his lips around his cigarette. "I figure LeBeau and Boudreaux have been feudin' since there was space to feud in – since before, if you take the archives at their word – so what the hell's one more generation? Though, mind you, she almost did it this time, IED right under our thruster an' all." He ashed the cigarette into the tray and stubbed it out. "And I'd ask what you were doin' out here in the rocks, but… well, I heard."

"Don't even bother saying you're sorry." It hurt like a fresh wound, thinking of coming to on the med-ship and asking, and the doctor saying _there was nothing left but the debris field_ , then the bright-burning fury and hope she was lying quenched by seeing it for himself, and the commandant-doctor's quiet words.

 _Solyma, all hands lost._ That he had added the _Caspartina_ to the fatalities list had almost gone unheard.

"You know I am," Remy said, completely undeterred by the dangerous vibration in the table under his elbows. " _Solyma_ could be an arrogant-ass bastard – they all could be – but he knew his Family." _You were his Family_ , Remy had the intelligence to not say. "And there ain't a handful of ships, Family or otherwise, that would take up for any of _us_. That'd take any of us in, for that matter."

Mutants, Remy meant. It wasn't unusual for Family ships to adopt in children either from stationside or ships in difficult circumstances, or accept children with Family ties as fosterlings who would either stay on to crew with their relations or return to their mother's-ship. But ever since Charles had taken over the captaincy – twenty-six years old, and _that_ had raised eyebrows – _Solyma_ had made it its business to adopt in almost all its children, and all those children were mutants. 

Erik had been thirty-one when he'd received his ship patch and his rank, and formal recognition as Charles's co-captain, and that night with Charles breathing deep in his arms, Erik had suggested that maybe the adopting-in ceremony would have been more appropriate. Charles had laughed and said he could arrange that if Erik really wanted to be exposed to Raven and the others for the entire night.

 _I'll pass_ , Erik had said, and rolled the two of them over, trapping Charles beneath him so Erik could kiss him as long as he wanted.

"If you're not running away from your wife, what are you doing out here? Smuggling is that bad in the inner territories?"

Instead of replying with something sarcastic, Remy sat back and _looked_. The sudden seriousness nearly threw Erik off his stride – LeBeau was never serious if he could possibly help it – but he kept himself steady, prepared to wait Remy out and keep him there if he had to.

"We heard through some little birds you were out here," Remy said at last. "No one forgets _Solyma_. No one will."

That Erik had been _trying_ to forget struck him, abruptly, as shameful. He swallowed it back and kept waiting.

"Lehnsherr, this ain't easy to say." For a wonder, the loquacious Remy seemed lost for words. "But… oh, fuck, a couple weeks back we got news through the feeds, a coded message that registered as coming from _Solyma_."

Space stations were made habitable by minutely-calibrated gravity fields generated in the deep wells in the stations' centers. There was no reason, then, to think the deck had shifted out from underneath him, but it _had_.

"Their transponder," Erik said hoarsely. "SOS."

"Not three jumps out from the debris field," Remy told him. "Ain't no way. If it were someone lookin' for a trophy, they'd have turned it off."

A call from the grave, a last message. It could have gotten picked up by a hulk trawler, its computerized brain ignoring whatever message it was that _Solyma_ 's transponder sang out into the emptiness. 

"No trawlers in the vicinity or on any of the roads," LeBeau said with a quick shake of his auburn head. "And no way a live ship sucks a transponder in and someone doesn't notice it for three jumps."

"Where is it now?"

"Had to bring Marrow in." LeBeau winced, and Erik almost did too; there was very little love lost between the captains of the _Gambit_ and the _Morlock_. "She might take it outta my hide, but she's tagging it. Queenie's got top-of-the-line comm sensors – don't ask how – and we'll find 'em, no matter where they've gotten to, one way or another."

His ship was gone, Erik reminded himself. He could still remember the destruction of the _Magda_ , six hundred years of Family history gone because Shaw wanted the only mutant child aboard. _Solyma_ 's death he couldn't remember: he had been in the life-pod, dragged helplessly into the _Caspartina_ 's own death throes, and then a great blast of energy had erupted from the _Caspartina_ 's port side and there had been a light…

Charles was gone. The thought still shook him; Erik was fairly certain it always would. _Charles is gone._

"What we could pick up was encrypted," Remy said after a pause to key in an order for beer, "and we're clever and all, but the signal's keyed to a particular biosignature." He paused, long enough to let Erik know whose that signature is.

It could be a trap. LeBeau was far from innocent, for all mutants found themselves chased across open space by Stryker and the Purifiers; no mutant worth anything would sell out his own people to the humans, but money was money and the LeBeaus were… the LeBeaus.

"LeBeau, I will _tear_ your ship apart if this is a lie." He could tear this station apart, ceramics be damned, his anger

"Then you know I'm tellin' you the truth," Remy said. His red-on-black eyes met Erik's squarely. "It ain't for our health we ran out here… I still owe Charles favors, the kind that don't have expiration dates."

The LeBeaus had their honor too, Erik reminded himself. They all did: it and blood were the only things that kept a few hundred people together in the sheltering, unchangeable skin of a deep-field ship. _Magda_ had fought to the bitter end to save one of its children from falling into the clutches of a madman; compared with that, LeBeau hauling himself and the _Gambit_ out to the dregs of space wasn't much – but he'd come out here to keep a promise to a dead man and his dead ship, all the same.

"Maybe _Solyma_ will surprise us," Remy said, once Erik had nodded grudgingly. "He was always good at that, you know."

"Yeah," Erik muttered, thinking of Charles's messy, unregulation hair and the first morning in his life he had thought to ignore his alarm clock and spend his day in bed, licking Charles's laughter off his lips. "He was."

"Well then," Remy said briskly, "unless you want to reminisce, we've got anchors-up in six hours, and you need to get your shit."

Almost Erik said he didn't need it – the gray company uniform and white singlets, the station-issue toiletries that smelled like something gone very wrong – but then he thought of his own duffel, his passport, his ship's patches and insignia.

"It'll be good to get in the air again," Remy said. He paused at the junction where the chaos of dockside gave way to the more sedate life of the station. "We're in Blue, Dock 1. Think you can make it?"

"I think I can," Erik said with a dryness he didn't feel, and as Remy departed for his ship in a flurry of brown coat, thought _Charles, please surprise me, one more time_.


	5. Spectator sport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With his concentration wavering, caught between paying attention to Raven and yearning to be _elsewhere_ , he lets a few thoughts slip past his shields.
> 
> And immediately sits straight up, and has to fight not to whip around and glare at the people responsible for them.
> 
> As far as Charles can tell, they aren't parents of any of the kids on Gen-X or the Marauders. In fact, they belong to kids from a couple of the teams that Gen-X's rivals, the Atomics, decimated earlier in the tournament. There's no logical reason for them to be here, but then (Charles thinks with a glower), Erik's arse in those track pants have their own logic, one that Charles himself pays very devoted attention to on a regular basis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, Day 5 already! Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading along, and I hope you've been enjoying the crazy AU fest so far <3
> 
> Today's fic is for pocky_slash, who wanted a bit more of the Second-Grade Army 'verse. It's a 'verse in which Charles has adopted bb!Raven and Erik is his boyfriend who is shanghaied into coaching Raven's soccer team. You can find the series [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/402699/chapters/663790), but it isn't necessary reading.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Emma, Raven  
> Warnings: none  
> Advertisements: Kid!fic, Charles is sexually frustrated in public, Erik being hot and unaware of it

**Spectator sport**

It isn't that Charles isn't invested in Raven's soccer team. Far from it: he does the usual parent stuff (driving her to practice, suppressing a wince when he sees how much top-of-the-line cleats go for and thinks how fast Raven will outgrow them, helping with the team travel fund-raisers) and, like a lot of parents, his heart almost hurts when Raven's celebrating a goal or crying in frustration over being unable to master a new skill. And if he has some other reasons to be invested, like his mother's profound indifference to his accomplishments and a young telepath's confused hurt when he senses none of the _lovejoyfondness_ that halos other parents when they think of their kids, well… Raven doesn't need to know about them.

Admittedly, though, it's hard to remind himself of that four games into a weekend tournament. The kids really are at the age where, despite Erik's insistence they should have learned otherwise, soccer is still just as much random running around as it is coordinated gameplay. It's late spring, heating into an unseasonable summer already, and Charles has god only knows how many layers of sunblock slathered on him, but all the lotion in the world can't shield him from the drugging warmth of the sun on the back of his neck, or the fact that he's watched Gen-X play essentially the same game three times already this weekend.

He keeps a mental eye on Raven's mental state so he can look up from his half-doze at the appropriate moments. Mostly she's a blur of excitement, but the sudden, tightening sensation of her focus narrowing is enough to pull his attention back to the pitch. It means he can legitimately celebrate if she scores a goal or contributes with an assist, or console her when she vents about how she missed such an easy shot.

Today, though, after a long week of work and too little sleep (he'd been keyed up by some promising new results in the current experiments) all he wants to do is let his thoughts drift, and maybe go hide in the shade by the concession stand and nap. Oh yes, that sounds lovely, he decides: sitting in one of the cheap plastic chairs, holding an iced tea, sounds like heaven compared to the arse-numbing hardness of the bleachers and the relentless sun overhead.

With his concentration wavering, caught between paying attention to Raven and yearning to be _elsewhere_ , he lets a few thoughts slip past his shields.

And immediately sits straight up, and has to fight not to whip around and glare at the people responsible for them.

As far as Charles can tell, they aren't parents of any of the kids on Gen-X or the Marauders. In fact, they belong to kids from a couple of the teams that Gen-X's rivals, the Atomics, decimated earlier in the tournament. There's no logical reason for them to be here, but then (Charles thinks with a glower), Erik's arse in those track pants have their own logic, one that Charles himself pays very devoted attention to on a regular basis.

 _There really should be a law_ , one of them is thinking. She turns to say something to the woman sitting next to her. "How does Gen-X get the hot coach?" she mutters.

Charles tries to scowl at them inconspicuously, then has to settle for glaring at the broad, oblivious stretch of Erik's back.

It's times like this Charles can't decide if his telepathy is a blessing or a curse, because now that he's effectively overheard he can't stop listening, like a song just loud enough to be heard and understood. And it doesn't help that Erik is stalking up and down the sidelines, occasionally barking orders in German that the kids, with the devotion of the fanatical, obey instantly.

Erik is, of course, unfairly, feloniously good-looking. He has the kind of dramatic good looks that would remain undiminished if he were dressed in… in polyester leisure suits or powder-blue tuxedoes with ruffled shirts. On the occasions when Charles stops by the engineering building to pick Erik up or have lunch together, it can be like wading through hormones if he encounters students coming out of Erik's lecture or staggering out of the office hours Erik grudgingly holds. He's _used_ to it, Charles tells himself, there is absolutely no reason why two soccer moms having a quietly heartfelt conversation about what they suppose Erik looks like with his Gen-X polo shirt off should bother him.

Still, he wishes it weren't a flagrant violation of telepath ethics to put up a gigantic PROPERTY OF CHARLES XAVIER over Erik's head. _I know what he looks like with his shirt off_ , he thinks vindictively to his shields, imagining that the words are still heard; it's a difficult trick, but he'd learned it as a boy when he'd had to find a way to vent his absolute hatred of Kurt and Cain. _I know he has a scar from his appendectomy. He got it when he was eighteen. I know how much pubic hair he has. I know he has bruises on his hips and I know how they got there. And you don't._

"I'd climb him like a tree," the first woman mutters. Her eyes are shaded by her Alpha Flight baseball cap; Charles doesn't need to see them to know they're fixated on the breadth of Erik's shoulders challenging the stretching capabilities of his shirt, how it runs down through his chest to the narrow channel of his waist and hips. His shirt is caught a little at the band of his track pants, from Erik absently scratching at a mosquito bite; every now and then it rides up when Erik bends to lecture a kid more effectively, enough skin to make Charles want to lick, even a flash of ridiculously-patterned boxers that Erik (contrary to all expectation) insists are good luck. The back of his neck is also faintly red, just underneath where his hair has curled and darkened with sweat, but he doesn't burn or freckle quite like Charles does. The sun is kind to him – very kind, Charles thinks irritably as the two women behind him (and, oh god, a few other people now _make it stop_ ) study the peculiar cut of the shadows Erik's baseball cap leaves across his cheekbones.

Fortunately he manages to tune out the worst of the lurid imaginings of the young man lurking at the end of his row, although not before sending the young man the suggestion that he might have a tick crawling up the back of his leg. Pettishly satisfied and not really caring, Charles goes back to watching the game, and watching the sleek lines of Erik's body as he paces the sidelines.

It doesn't help that Erik goes on a sex embargo for tournament weekends. No sex Friday or Saturday, which in Charles's book (which includes a lot of sex) should constitute an international diplomatic incident. He'd gone without for years raising Raven effectively as a single parent, and he doesn't resent that in the least bit, but damn it, he's thirty-two and loves sex and doesn't get to have it most of the week.

That Erik almost invariably makes it up to him Sunday afternoons doesn't really help. Sulkily, Charles imagines sneaking his fingers under the waistband of Erik's pants and bending to lick the smooth line of muscle running from Erik's abdomen to his groin, Erik's hand cupping the back of his head and a soft, encouraging – 

"Oh _there_ you are, Charles; I thought I sensed sexual frustration coming from somewhere."

Charles makes himself say something pleasant to Emma Frost, Emma whose primary mutation is technically telepathy but Charles suspects of being the ability to turn up at the worst possible moment. And of course he hadn't been shielding, aside from making sure the few telepathic kids aren't paying attention to his increasingly frustrated and irritated imaginings.

Behind him, the two women continue to speculate on whether or not Erik will bring the same intensity he has in coaching to the bedroom, and if he's single, and if he isn't, if his partner won't mind them stealing Erik and tying him up. Charles very much _would_ mind, as a matter of fact, but he keeps this behind the shields he's just put up.

Emma settles next to him, wearing immaculate white linen and a moue of distaste. Charles glances between her and the pitch; their friendship is a slight bone of contention between himself and Erik, who is convinced that Emma's attempting to spy on him for Sebastian Shaw, coach of Gen-X's archrivals, the Atomics. Because the Atomics are the enemy Shaw is, in consequence, the enemy too, and if telepathy-blocking devices existed, Charles is pretty sure Erik would wear one around Emma at all times, never mind that Emma is spectacularly uninterested in football and only puts up with it because… Charles actually isn't entirely sure why.

"What brings you to this side of the pitch?" he asks once Emma has herself situated and had a drink out of a silvery flask she'd produced by her improbably large handbag.

"Oh, I just broke up with Sebastian." Emma sighs elaborately as she squints out at the field. "He's being terribly obsessive about this entire season… apparently there is some sort of _rivalry_ between the Atomics and your team, as if eight-year-olds have advanced much past picking their noses. Anyway, he's gone back to his office to watch films of today's games; he doesn't want to leave anything to chance when the Atomics play your kids next week. It would be endearing if it weren't so obnoxious." She sighs again, more obviously irritated this time.

"I'm… sorry," Charles says.

"Don't be; lord knows I'm not," Emma tells him. She adjusts her sunglasses thoughtfully. "If you would like, I can have a few words with your two friends sitting three levels up and to the right."

"No. No. That's perfectly all right, Emma." Oh god. Charles's face is burning, and it's not entirely from incipient sunburn; the very thought of Emma marching up to two people Charles may have to see for the rest of the season engenders images too terrifying to contemplate.

"I may do it, even if you don't like," Emma sniffs. "Really, it's like that wretched novel the peons at Barnes and Noble recommend to me, only with less scintillating prose. Would you like to hear them hypothesizing about your partner's – "

" _No_."

Emma sighs again. "The metaphor is awkward, but vivid all the same."

"God." He's scarlet, Charles knows, and he's powerless to stop the blush until it decides to recede. "You know we're technically not supposed to be listening in anyway."

The sympathetic look Emma gives him would be grating coming from someone who isn't Emma. "Honey, they're practically _screaming_ they'd bang your boyfriend like a screen door in a hurricane." She pauses. "Andrea's words, not mine."

Charles sends her a telepathic warning to knock it off, which Emma does with an eyeroll. She settles daintily next to him, one leg crossed over the other so her stiletto heel taps against Charles's calf. _Thank you_ , Charles thinks at her, and settles in to watch the final few minutes of the game.

Behind them, Andrea and her friend make startled, unhappy noises.

Emma beams.

_EMMA._

_Maisie was thinking about introducing herself to your boyfriend afterward, and I thought you would like to avoid the awkwardness. She had a whole scenario planned._ The curl of Emma's lip is unrepentant. _Unless, of course, you want to see Erik staring at her while she fumbles through a lie about transferring her son to X-Gen._

Watching Erik confronted with unexpected interpersonal interactions is amusing for about five seconds before it becomes awkward and Charles has to find some way to save the hapless one from Erik's irritation. Reluctantly, Charles thanks Emma, enough of an edge to the thought to tell her he still disapproves of her and her choices.

_I also showed them my memory of the two of you making out behind the shelter at the league picnic._

Charles buries his face in his hands.

The embarrassment, mercifully, goes on only for another ten minutes. Gen-X is safely two goals up and Remy, diverted from trying to impress Ororo, has helped guarantee the Marauders aren't going to win this. Thanks to his dedicated focus, Charles watches Raven score the last goal of the game, a blue streak charging in from midfield, picking the ball up off a pass from Jean and using her agility to eel around two of the defenders.

The ball hits the back of the net and the Gen-X kids go nuts. Erik nods once, tightly, with satisfaction. Charles impulsively seizes Emma in a hug and bounces her up and down, awkward because in the stilettos she's taller than he is. Around them, the other Gen-X parents hug and exchange high-fives and shout congratulations to their kids, while the Marauders' sigh to themselves and mutter about how it's just a game. Maisie and Andrea both sigh happily.

"Ew." Carefully, Emma extracts herself from Charles's hold. After some impatient muttering about wrinkles and getting cocoa butter out of linen, she says, "Well, congratulations on your victory and all that, but I should be going… I need to air out my apartment."

She vanishes in a swirl of white just as Raven breaks loose from the rest of her team and pelts across the pitch to Charles, who hops down from the bleachers and strides up to meet her, his arms outstretched.

"Daddy Daddy Daddy did you _see_?" Raven shrieks as she flings herself at him, an exuberant armful of sweat, grass stains, and scales.

"I _did_ , my darling. You were brilliant." She's getting a bit heavy, but he manages to swing her around nonetheless as she squawks and laughs, clutching him in the crook of his elbows. "That goalie didn't even see you coming, did she?"

"No!" Raven, fit of excitement over, comes to a standstill and smooths her hair down nonchalantly. Still, when she twists to look over at Erik, her face is anxious, searching his for approval. "I did okay, right Erik?"

"You did," Erik says. Raven beams, her teeth startling and white against the blue of her face; Charles has seen enough practices to know what a prize a compliment from Erik is like. Erik offers her a thin smile, which is practically indulgent, before ordering her off to join her teammates for their post-game meeting.

Raven gallops off, tumbling into an exuberant knot with Henry (despite him having cooties, according to Raven's announcement after practice last week) and Ororo. Erik watches her go, not obviously fond, but Charles can feel the warmth emanating from him all the same, cautious and uncertain despite its richness, as if Erik can't quite believe he's allowing himself to feel this. After a moment taken to make sure all discipline has not broken down, he turns to Charles again.

"You didn't need to stay here for the whole thing," he says, drifting close, a hand low on Charles's back, right in the sensitive, thrilling curve of his lower spine.

Charles leans back into the touch, thinks of Erik's sun-warmed hands and Andrea and Maisie lurking nearby.

"I did," he says, and leans up for a kiss that Erik grants him freely, licking at Erik's lips and flirting with the line of respectability. Erik lets him, even though the kids shriek about ew gross _kissing_ , even reciprocates enough to promise more for later.


	6. Pride Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only holiday Shaw does believe in observing is Mutant Pride Day. Not that they get the day off – god forbid – but they close early for the afternoon rally. Shaw believes passionately in the rally for reasons that have less to do with pride and rather more to do with his private vision (worked into Caspartina's "corporate philosophy") of mutants banding together to overthrow world governments, possibly via the use of nuclear weapons. He hasn't let disarmament get in the way of his plans either; instead, he reads the news for reports and conspiracy theories coming out of Iran and North Korea with a dedication that Erik would find disturbing if it weren't for the fact that it means Shaw can inflict less attention on Erik and his fellow employees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to my clock, I'm just under the wire! This is for Elaur, who wanted something from the Bookshop 'verse. Now, in _this_ 'verse, Erik is one of the benighted employees at Shaw's indie bookshop, Caspartina Books. The full fic is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/338131), and you mayyyy want to read it to get the full picture of what's going on, but it may not be necessary.
> 
> Even though this fic started out light and silly, it became serious. PLEASE heed the warnings below.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles (implied Raven/Hank at the end)  
> Warnings: Childhood emotional/psychological abuse (referenced), bullying, emotional trauma  
> Advertisements: Shaw being a megalomaniac, Charles and Erik learning to communicate, mutant rights

**Pride day**

Shaw doesn't believe in observing holidays unless the government makes him, and even then. Usually Erik can't care less because he's not the holiday sort of person – nearly ten years without a family to celebrate with, and looking in on other kids trick-or-treating or opening presents has only solidified his distaste – but the first time he'd tried to ask for time off at Thanksgiving to spend with Charles, Shaw had acted like Erik had knifed him in the back and then twisted the blade.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless employee." Shaw had sighed theatrically before remembering precisely whose boyfriend Erik was and why he should give Erik the day off. "But if you _must_ take Thanksgiving off, then you can close on Black Friday. We're closing at midnight, by the way."

The only holiday Shaw does believe in observing is Mutant Pride Day. Not that they get the day off – god forbid – but they close early for the afternoon rally. Shaw believes passionately in the rally for reasons that have less to do with pride and rather more to do with his private vision (worked into Caspartina's "corporate philosophy") of mutants banding together to overthrow world governments, possibly via the use of nuclear weapons. He hasn't let disarmament get in the way of his plans either; instead, he reads the news for reports and conspiracy theories coming out of Iran and North Korea with a dedication that Erik would find disturbing if it weren't for the fact that it means Shaw can inflict less attention on Erik and his fellow employees.

Secretly Erik agrees with Shaw on most of it, at least the parts about how they'd be better off without the constant presence of humans forcing them into the corners of society. He has a hard time seeing how, precisely, he owes the human world anything; he functions in it and has done well for himself – as well as a broke college kid with murdered parents can – but it isn't _living_ , being the recipient of charity, reluctantly-given government money, and very freely-given distrust and suspicion. If it weren't for the fact that all of Shaw's plans end with him being Emperor of the World and all of civilization lying in smoking, radioactive ruins, Erik might actually have considered signing on. As it is, the thought of Shaw in charge of anything more than an independent Boston bookstore makes Erik shudder.

It's two days until the Saturday rally and they've had displays up for a while. Erik can't remember the last time he, Raven, and the others banded together to make the store look its best – well, he can; it was the last rally. There's an elaborate display, courtesy of Raven, of mutant-authored books and biographies and autobiographies of famous mutants – Charles Xavier I and Magneto are prominently featured, of course – along with histories of mutant rights and a selection of fiction. They have speakers lined up, mostly authors but also some activists who are slowly making their way into city government. Darwin's come out with a special Pride Week menu of coffee and pastry; Shaw, who'd taken to the idea of the coffee shop only under great duress, seems most pleased by that.

They even have a float – with _Caspartina Books_ prominently displayed on all four sides, of course – and Erik's in charge of doing "something impressive with metal" while Raven changes shapes and Shaw absorbs Alex's plasma blasts.

Erik doesn't really do _happy_ , but as he locks up Thursday night and starts his trek back home, he feels a curious lightness just under his rib cage, and anticipation that doesn't have dread accompanying it.

Charles is waiting for him at home, stretched out on their couch and not paying much attention to the book in his lap. Erik senses the tea in the steel mug sitting on the coffee table; it's cold, a sign that Charles has been effectively distracted – although not, apparently, by his book.

"Hey," Erik says as he dumps his satchel on the floor by the sofa.

"Oh, hello." Charles almost – almost – manages to sound surprised, which is something, considering Erik's pretty sure Charles had zeroed in on him the second he got off the T. He pushes his book to the side, glancing down quickly to check he's marked his place. "How was work?"

"We're all set for Pride Day," Erik tells him, bending in for a quick kiss so the last words trail off into the softness of Charles's mouth against him. "Sean almost broke the float, but I think we're set."

"Lovely," Charles says absently.

Something doesn't ping right. It could be Charles still being distracted, or it could be something else. Erik's too tired to analyze it, but he asks anyway, a wordless, inquiring tap, _Everything okay?_ and out loud, "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing… a bit under the weather I suppose." Charles, despite being very emotionally open most of the time, is irritatingly good at the British stiff upper lip. "Getting caught out in the rain the other day, maybe."

"I'd buy that if you were in an Austen novel," Erik says dryly. He drops onto the couch with a whoof and playfully reaches for Charles's forehead, the delicate skin at his temples where his telepathy lives. Charles tilts his head to get away, batting at Erik's hand impatiently. "If you don't have a fever, you can't stay home from school." More seriously, _are_ you okay? Will you still be able to make Pride?"

"I don't know," Charles says softly. "I… I don't know if I want to go this year."

"What?" For a moment Erik thinks the world has shifted out from underneath him; he needs a few seconds to register that he's reached for every bit of metal in the vicinity and is holding it. "What the fuck – what's going on? Why wouldn't you want to go?"

"It's complicated, and I have my reasons," Charles says, that stubborn, infuriating tilt to his chin. "But the last time I checked, attendance wasn't compulsory."

Erik grits his teeth. "You know, you being a patronizing asshole is not helping you in this discussion."

"Are we having a discussion?" Charles asks. He's pulled himself up tight, knees pressed to his chest. His eyes are liquid – not quite tears, but not far removed. "All I did was say _I don't think I want to go to a loud, crowded event where thousands of other people will be_. Like it or not, it _is_ my choice, Erik."

"Are you ashamed?" Erik fires back. It's the only reason he can think of for a mutant to not want to go support the community. "You don't want your proper, _rich_ ass being seen with the rest of the freaks?"

 _No_ Charles shouts, loud enough to leave Erik wincing. He scrambles up, twisting out of Erik's reach, a wordless _don't even think about it_ when Erik considers grabbing for Charles's watch. He hovers at the edge of the couch, the flash of anger abruptly contained again, eyeing Erik like he honestly can't believe Erik's just said what he did, as if Erik isn't shocked as well.

"I don't want to talk about this tonight," Charles says, small and tight and strained. "Good night, Erik."

"Good fucking night," Erik shouts after him, only after Charles has slammed their bedroom door.

Erik's long been practiced at expecting the worst and not hoping for the best, but being with Charles has got him out of the habit. For a few minutes he's honestly too surprised at Charles's reaction to a simple question – how the conversation had veered from concern to resentment to anger – to do much more than stare at a space on the bay windows and the dark blur of the river beyond them. When anger comes in, it has to claw for purchase, sliding off the _what just happened_ and _it was only a matter of time before he disappointed you_.

It's that thought that drops the anger off completely. Erik curls up on the sofa, distantly resigned to having to spend the rest of his night on it.

He's been disappointed before, until he learned to stop expecting anything from people, but being disappointed in Charles… that hurts, and he thinks that being disappointed in Charles is the one thing he can't handle other than his parents being taken, out of everything life's given him.

* * *

Erik's Fridays are generally light, no classes but plenty of homework and lab time to keep him occupied until he has to drag himself to the bookstore for more of Shaw's capitalist torture. It's something he generally doesn't look forward to, when it's the end of the week and he wants to hole up with Charles and have sex, or spend the evening doing things other than wait on idiot customers. But today, the day before Pride Day, the shop is bustling with people just arrived from out of town and Erik's actually in a hurry to get there.

Part of it's distraction, of course, one that's badly needed. He's not entirely sure if Charles had telepathically masked his departure from the apartment this morning or if the sleep he'd fallen into had been so deep and unbreakable, after hours spent staring at the ceiling asking questions that had no answers coming, that Charles had simply left. Either way, waking up had been like dragging himself up through heavy, dark water into the light, leaving him exhausted and chilled through.

Despite his tiredness, he picks up the pace, breaking into a jog as he rounds the corner onto Brookline.

Of course Raven will be there – it's all hands on deck for Pride Weekend – and he has to find a way to talk to her about Charles. Erik doesn't want to think about that. Thinking about Charles starts a slow burn in his chest, something close to nausea, and he _hates_ it. He hates his complete inability to stop feeling that way almost as much.

He almost can't make it through the shop to the back room; Caspartina heaves and bustles with people, easily five times their normal weekday traffic. Mutants and allies come from all over New England for Boston's Pride Day, even though the movement's strong enough now that most cities have marches and rallies once a year, and standing committees to advocate for mutant equality. 

Erik, who's usually not good at examining his own emotions, can't fight the swell of pride and happiness, watching Raven in her blue face kneeling in front of a little yellow-skinned girl to let her feel her scales, while her father looks on with a collection of children's books tucked under his arm. A few people with less obvious mutations demonstrate them for each other – Darwin by pouring scalding coffee on his hand while the cute Asian-American girl he's showing off for produces sparks from her fingertips.

Alex and Sean are expressly forbidden from demonstrating their powers, unless they do it outside and in such a way that Shaw won't be involved in property damage disputes and lawsuits.

Erik dumps his stuff out and is in the process of heading back out – he's going to start a bit early, but there's no point in lurking in the stockroom – when he nearly collides with Raven, who's hurrying through the door at the same time.

At first he lets her go after they apologize to each other, but the moment his power closes around the door handle and prepares to pull it open, he finds himself pausing. The chaos of the store waits just outside, and when he'll have another chance to talk to Raven today, he doesn't know.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure." Raven's frowning up at a shelf just out of reach. After a moment, she morphs into a seven-foot-tall version of herself and pulls a book down. She returns to herself, a slight smile of satisfaction on her mouth as she regards the book. " _Mutation and Me_ … It's corny, but I've always loved it. You were saying?"

"It's Charles," Erik begins, feeling the awkwardness double and manifest itself in a blush heating the back of his neck and his face.

"I hope this isn't, like, advice for sex." Raven regards him narrowly. "You've been together almost a year, I'd hoped you would have figured it out by now."

"No. _No_." Erik shakes his head to emphasize how little this is about sex. "He doesn't… He told me last night he doesn't go to pride things."

"Oh." Raven's hands go tight around the book and the teasing fades from her eyes. She leans back against the stock shelves, sinking down so she can wrap her arms around her knees. It's maybe the most vulnerable Erik's ever seen her; Raven has no qualms about going to town on assholes who proposition her on the T or calling out people being narrow-minded bigots. She even gets angry at Charles. "I…" She glances up at him. "I don't suppose you tried to talk to Charles about this."

"He didn't want to." Betrayal and a bit of anger burn deep. He'd had the night for them to percolate, and they'd come in ugly, bubbling flashes at unexpected moments throughout the morning. He'd stared at himself in the mirror and had to set down his razor, afraid of losing control for the first time in years.

"You should get him to talk," Raven says. "He does have reasons for it… I don't agree with them, not fully, but I can understand where he's coming from."

"Maybe if I knew those reasons, I could do something to help him," Erik points out as evenly as he can. Usually Raven will talk forever about Charles's foibles; he hadn't come in here expecting to pull teeth.

Still, he closes the door the rest of the way and goes to sit beside her. The floor is cold through his jeans; Raven's unexpectedly warm, where her bare arm brushes his.

"I was pretty young when this all went down," Raven says at last, picking absently at a loose thread on her trousers. "You know I'm not really Charles's sister, like by blood… my dad and his used to work together. His dad was my godfather and he and Sharon – Charles's mom – ended up being my legal guardians, so when my dad died, Sharon took me in. Mostly because she had to; Charles's dad had died too. I don't really remember him."

Erik's heard a bit about Sharon – much less, he realizes, than Charles's inexhaustible ability to talk about anything would indicate. Mostly when Charles talks about family he talks about Raven (and Erik's heart twists a bit, thinking of how little time the two of them spend together) and the things they would get up to as kids, or the amazing faces she could come up with just by looking at the portraits in the family home. The other members, Sharon and a stepfather and stepbrother, live at the very edges, more outlines Charles never really fills in than actual people.

"Sharon had just remarried, and her new husband was a total dick. Like, I'd say that was his mutant power if he weren't the worst kind of baseline." Raven's yellow eyes darken with anger and memories. "He talked shit about me and Charles all the time, and his son, Cain… he was probably worse. At least Kurt left on business trips all the time, but we couldn't get rid of Cain. Sometimes Charles could _convince_ Cain to leave us alone, but then he started reading about the laws they were passing to regulate telepaths, and he stopped. He legitimately thought he'd be thrown in jail for trying to defend himself… He always helped me, though, if he realized Cain was… around."

Raven's clearly elided something at the end of her sentence. Erik, who's had experience to spare of group homes and foster homes that kept him for the check rather than care for him, can fill in the blanks too easily. Charles has never mentioned this, but then, why would he? Erik's seen plenty of people ashamed of the things done to them. Even Charles, who has enough pride and arrogance for any three people, could be ashamed of things he shouldn't ever be ashamed of.

"I don't really get why he internalized it the way he did," Raven continues. "I just got pissed off – at everyone, really. Charles kept trying to convince me to hide, and I kept trying to convince him the only way I could be happy was if I could be _myself_ … so I left, eventually. We're fine now, but it's better if we don't spend much time together. I can't stand him worrying about me, but he's like a dog with a bone, he can't help it. Why he's still this way, I can't tell you."

Erik nods, more to acknowledge her words than to say he understands.

"Now," Raven says as she springs gracefully to her feet, "I have a book to get to a little kid sometime today, so if you've got enough food for thought..?"

Erik nods again. Raven pats him on the head and rushes out.

It looks, he thinks with a flash of humor, that he's going to be late for work anyway. Shaw, mercifully, is nowhere to be seen, probably off plotting with Frost and the others. Erik resituates himself – his ass is going numb, but he's reluctant to move elsewhere – and turns over what Raven's told him, and what he knows of Charles, trying to get the two to reconcile.

Charles is so clearly proud of his ability, most of the time. He uses it freely around Erik and in their circle of friends. He's loud and passionate in his defenses of mutant equality whenever the subject comes up, and Erik's sometimes gotten headaches from Charles being indignant at the news reports on Congress trying to curtail mutant rights or the (fortunately rarer these days) reports of hate crimes. There's no way Charles hates himself or Erik or other mutants; he isn't one of those – Erik knows he shouldn't think of them as traitors but he can't help it – who participate in studies looking for gene therapies and cures for what they are.

But he'd clammed up when Erik had mentioned Pride Day and the rally, and the wall he'd put up when Erik had gone asking had been as high and impenetrable as anything; nothing could say _Go away and leave it alone, or else_ any more explicitly.

He itches to blame Charles's privilege. Take away his telepathy and he'd probably be okay: he has being white, and male, and upper-class, to fall back on. Erik tries to convince himself that Charles sees his mutation not as something evil but something that is occasionally inconvenient, but… no. He's _felt_ Charles's delight over something as simple as sitting close together on the bus, Charles's gloved hand clasped in his, Charles's shyly pleased smile when Erik had clumsily projected back how he felt.

Something else, then. Something that makes Charles… uncertain, and makes it impossible for Charles to slough it off the way Erik and Raven have.

 _People are different_ , he tells himself. It's not a piece of knowledge that comes readily to him, or that he can assimilate. According to Charles, Erik divides the world into "people who are like me" and "people who should be like me." It's never been a problem until now, when he's faced with the possibility that Charles is less like Erik than he'd thought.

 _What happened, though_ , he asks himself, is tempted to pitch the question out into the ether, to see if Charles will pick up on it.

It's not often he makes the effort to see things from other people's perspectives, because most people are fine not seeing things from his, but Charles… for the first time in a long time, Erik decides, he wants to see into someone else's head, and see why they are what they are, and understand.

First, though, he thinks with a sigh, he has to get through work.

* * *

He gets home late because Shaw, of course, keeps the doors open until eleven on Pride Weekend, the lights helpfully dimmed so mutants with adaptations that predispose them to nocturnal activities can come, browse, and buy. A few other human-owned stores do this too, but only after they'd realized the potential profits they can earn off mutants and the humans who like staying out late. Erik allows himself, grudgingly, to be impressed by Shaw's marriage of mutant advocacy and capitalism.

Charles is there, for a wonder; Erik doesn't bother trying to hide the wave of relief, even though he's fairly sure Charles can pick up on the apprehension too.

What Erik sees entering the apartment is distressingly like last night: Charles curled up on the couch, book and tea to hand. He tells himself not to be idiotic, because "Charles on the couch, reading and drinking tea" is more or less the default setting for evenings when Charles isn't at the library. Still, there's something vulnerable and wounded in the curve of Charles's shoulders and the pale skin at his nape, right where the hair curls. 

"Hey," Erik mutters and, unsure of his welcome, settles on the easy chair instead of the sofa.

Charles is determined as ever; he doesn't shy away from looking at Erik when he says hello in return.

"I wanted…" He's planned what to say all afternoon, to the point that work hadn't been the distraction he'd thought it would be. Of course now, confronted by Charles, all his planning – as it usually does, when confronted with Charles – goes out the window, and the words refuse to come.

"I talked to Raven," he says at last.

Charles winces. "I can't imagine what she had to say was complimentary."

"No, it was…" Erik temporizes before deciding on, "Fair. And I think I – I want to understand, Charles. I _need_ to." Because if he couldn't… 

Erik has no idea what would happen, if this might be something irreparable between them, if it might be the end, because Erik _can't_ compromise on his identity. He has little enough as it is: being a mutant and a Jew, his parents' child, are the only things the system couldn't rip away from him.

Charles makes a soft noise, then, "Come sit with me?"

He does, curling around Charles as Charles fits himself into the fold of Erik's body. _You're so long_ , Charles sends with a twist of sad amusement. For answer, Erik lets his fingers trail across the back of Charles's neck, more for comfort than anything, relieved to find that Charles is as solid as ever.

After a long pause, with the sense of a gathering storm behind it, Charles finally speaks.

"When I was little, it was such a gift," Charles says wistfully. "My parents used to play games with me – guess the number they were thinking of, what they were thinking of for dinner – and I would do my best to read their minds. Of course, my control wasn't perfect then," he adds self-consciously, "but I did learn."

"Of course you did." Erik can't quite suppress the fondness behind the words.

"But then my dad died when I was six and Mother remarried to a man who… well, Kurt Marko wasn't." Charles stops dead, then bursts out as if the words have broken something in him: "He hated me. He hated what I was; he was one of those people who used to think that being a mutant was a _condition_ that should be fixed. And after a while, he… convinced my mother she should be ashamed of me, too, for what I am."

Erik tries to get his mind around this. He's had adults tell him he should hate himself for being a mutant, and kids tell him he should just kill himself and rid the world of another mutie. Part of him grumbles about how Charles at least had six years of loving parents who took joy in his mutation – and a family history that includes the most illustrious openly-telepathic mutant of all time – but then he thinks, with a sudden twist like a knife, what it must be like _for a telepath_.

Charles smiles bitterly. "Imagine you don't hear just the words, Erik. Imagine you can hear and feel and, and _taste_ every single thought behind those words, when the person saying them absolutely believes you don't have a right to exist."

He takes a deep breath; it shudders loose against Erik's collar bone. "I know it's stupid. I know Kurt and Cain were wrong about _everything_. I look at you and Raven and Darwin and all the others, and I see how absolutely _magnificent_ you are, and how special, and I know I am too, but when Pride comes around I just… I hear Kurt in my head and it's like I'm nine all over again."

There's a hint of dampness just beneath Erik's collar. Carefully, Erik redirects his thoughts from that to comfort, nonsensical soothing he's not entirely sure Charles hears. He's not really made to be comforting; if Charles needed to be shouted at, Erik could do that very well, but not this being still and letting Charles lean on him.

"I've tried getting it out," Charles continues, sounding honestly angry now. "But I can't make myself forget what it was like, and I _hate_ it, but it's like it's down in my bones and I can't get it out, no matter how hard I try. Every time I think about going to Pride, doing something that _public_ , all I can hear is Kurt and Cain laughing at me, and my mother agreeing with them and saying she should have gotten my dad to take me to one of those private clinics to treat my 'condition.'"

Something in Erik freezes at that, then thaws into absolute fury. He imagines finding Charles's mother and doing… he's not entirely sure what, but it involves yelling. He imagines doing far, far worse to Kurt and Cain.

"Cain's gone," Charles says quietly, "and Kurt died years ago. I don't talk to my mother anymore, not really… I can't look at her without remembering what she was like when I was really little. She's just indifferent now."

"What if…" Erik considers his next words, has the sense that Charles is carefully staying out of his head, as if afraid that the next thing out of Erik's mouth will be _we should break up_. "What if I were with you? We'll stay together – side by side." He'll have to withdraw from the float, or… "Ride with us," he says, "if you want to."

"On the float." Charles gives him a skeptical look.

In answer, Erik gives him his memory of the parade last year: Commonwealth Avenue lined with their own people, some of them human-standard and others furred or feathered or scaled, in every conceivable color, showing themselves proudly, children showing off their abilities for strangers, and Erik condescending to make a little rose out of a paperclip for one little girl who'd clutched it in her chubby, furry fist and whispered "thank you."

And, best of all, being surrounded by _acceptance_. Some of it was defiance – _we're here, we're mutants, we aren't going anywhere_ – but so much of it had been _joy_ , in Erik and his ability and all the others and their abilities, and Erik wishes now he could remember precisely what it felt like to be overwhelmed by _belonging_.

"Oh, Erik," Charles says, very quietly, and something in Charles breaks open and passes over Erik like a dark wave – loneliness and shame and grief and pain – and is gone, leaving the air between them washed clean.

 

(Five years later, when Erik is packing for their move to England, he comes across a photo. At first he's annoyed because the "random sentimental crap" is supposed to be Charles's responsibility, but then he pauses to inspect it more closely. 

He's not entirely sure why he'd printed it out and framed it, when no one prints and frames things anymore. He has no memory of it being on Charles's Facebook page, but Charles puts everything up there, so it could be buried somewhere back in the depths of his timeline.

It's a picture of the two of them – he thinks Raven took it, or maybe Angel hovering alongside – at Charles's first Pride Parade. 

Erik is smiling, which he rarely does since most photos of him are taken only under duress, and he has the M-for-Mutant and X-for-X-Gene painted on his face, a cluster of coins levitating over his right hand.

Charles is pressed close, eyes incandescent. He has the X on one cheek and the T-for-Telepath on the other, and Erik can remember painting them on himself, turning Charles's face from side to side, the brush stroking gently down his face so Charles shivered. The smile on his face speaks of nothing but joy; there's nothing about him to suggest any mutant ability whatsoever, but Erik remembers that moment and feels now what he thinks Charles must have felt, a sudden happiness so deep and sharp it's like pain.

He stares blindly at the photo for another minute, unwilling to put it down and lost for anything else to do except look at the two of them and remember Charles's coruscating joy.

 _Love, are you almost done with that room?_ Charles calls from the kitchen. _We do need to get over to Raven and Hank's soon._

 _No thanks to you, you slacker_ , Erik says gruffly, shaking the moment off, and carefully packs the photograph away.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to reiterate, if you'd like to request a prompt or something, feel free to leave it in a comment! <3


	7. A yoga fic [1]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma handed him a typed list. Charles scanned it, blinking a few times at the names and trying to work up something more articulate than noises of surprise.
> 
> "These are _yoga_ studios," he said. "The Peaceful Peach Studio. The Serenity Center. The Modern Yogi. _Please_ tell me you're joking." He waved the paper at her to emphasize his point.
> 
> "I don't even wish I could tell you I was joking," Emma said. Her blue eyes had gone hard, a reminder of diamond in them. "I hope you're not insulting an ancient tradition of bodily and spiritual discipline just because you want to be shirty with me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another teaser sort of thing, the beginning of a fic I'd started just before Yahtzee started posting her completely awesome "Acceptable Boundaries." I decided I would much rather read that than write this, but it developed a little bit in my head today so I fleshed it out. The follow-up may be tomorrow, or in a few more days.
> 
> Pairings: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Emma, Steve Rogers  
> Warnings: violence (referenced), emotional/psychological trauma, PTSD  
> Advertisements: woobie!Charles, Erik being a hot yoga instructor

**The yoga fic**

"Charles, I think you know what I'm going to say."

Emma had turned herself to diamond – she almost always did for her sessions, unless she was making a point about vulnerability or trust or something – but Charles didn't need telepathy to know what the subject of the day's appointment was going to be. He also did not see the point in articulating it, seeing as he knew, and Emma knew, and Emma knew he knew. Instead, he settled for looking around Emma's office, stretching out the silence as long as he could.

Emma Frost's office was, like the woman herself, a dozen shades of pale, white and cream and taupe, a strange textured painting that drew its only color from the shadows cast by the lighting. Charles felt uncomfortably conspicuous in his brown corduroys and dark blue sweater and thought, wistfully, of his own office two floors down, homey and cluttered and – pending his certification to return to work – safely empty.

Despite being in diamond form, Emma managed to arch an eyebrow. "You logged three incidents last week alone, Charles. None serious, but in all you felt 'very threatened and needed to exert a high level of control to prevent yourself from defensive responses,'" she read off her computer screen. "You've also not been sleeping, and you've self-reported no obvious reduction in your hypervigilance. And," she produced a piece of paper from his file, "your physiotherapist mentioned that you still guard the wound site and have limited range of motion, despite there being no obvious physiological reason for it."

"Are you done with my list of failures?"

"For now." Emma's fingers folded together with a crystalline chiming. "For most trauma patients who also happen to be psionics, I recommend psyonil at this stage."

It was _work_ , preventing himself from lashing out and it was a long moment, hunched in on himself as if trying to keep his power contained safely in the center of his body, before he realized that he had it. Emma still sat in front of him, glittering coolly, although she did glance at the wall separating her office from Dr. MacTaggert's.

"I'm fine," Charles said hoarsely, collapsing back in his seat. _Please please calm down_ , he told his power, unnerved at how it had suddenly become more like a wild animal than a part of him. His telepathy had been more than breath to him, a central part of who he was, and now it bridled and balked and lashed out for _no apparent fucking reason_ , ever since –

"He's in jail now." Of course Emma was reading his mind; again, it was _work_ not to throw her out on her ass when he realized the intrusion. She added, "Rules, Charles," to remind him: no shielding in therapy.

"I know, I'm sorry." Charles sneaked a glance at his watch. Five minutes gone, fifty-five to go.

"It's a vicious cycle," Emma said, for a wonder sounding sympathetic. She even flickered back into flesh and blood – something fragile and organic that he could control if he had to and not threatening at all.

Charles took a breath that was nowhere near as steady as he wanted it to be.

"You perceive yourself losing control, so you fight all the harder for it." Emma waited for Charles's grudging nod. "And, instead of finding yourself in control, you find your power is slipping more rapidly out of your grasp – which frightens you, and which causes you to react violently."

"We've established this," Charles snapped.

"Of course." Emma flickered back to crystal again. "And that loss of control, that defensiveness… You know the law, Charles. The threshold for determining whether you're a danger to yourself or others is lower with telepaths."

Just another benefit of the damned Kelly Act. _Lovely_. Charles breathed in, harsh and high, through his nose and let it out slowly, almost the only thing that ever worked to calm him down these days. "And you can call the hospital to commit me and load me up on psyonil, and the doctor wouldn't even wait for the judge's signature to dry on the order."

Emma nodded.

"I have lawyers, you know. They can fight it," he tried.

"And you'd still be in treatment until they managed to get a stay. And I guarantee you a judge would take his or her sweet time hearing arguments on that." Emma sighed and, melting back into her human self again, said, "I'm not saying this to blackmail you, Charles. I'm saying this because you are almost at the point where I'm obligated, as a professional, to make authorities aware of the situation."

"So you'd revictimize a victim," Charles said incredulously. "That is _so_ very therapeutic."

"I refuse to be the villain in what is, so far, a purely hypothetical scenario." The edge in Emma's voice was like cut glass, cold and dangerous. "You're a therapist too, Charles. The rational part of you knows that if it were me or Betsy or Jean sitting where you are now, you'd have to make that same call."

And he _did_ know that, but the knowing failed to make it any easier. He struggled for something like perspective – always difficult these days – and the reason that usually came with it. Viewed from the distance of clinical detachment, he could see the problems with impulsivity, exaggerated startle response, insomnia that aggravated the startle response and problems with emotional equilibrium, panic attacks… His clinical self ticked off the items on the Penn Inventory; the part of himself that insisted _no no no I am fine, my emotions and behaviors are logical responses to a terrible situation_ looked on with dismay.

"PTSD in psionics is difficult to treat," Emma said quietly. "For empaths, it manifests in overreaction to emotional states perceived to be threatening. For telepaths…"

"Inability to filter extraneous thoughts, reactive and unanalyzed attack or defense responses to individuals whose thoughts are interpreted as being dangerous," Charles finished. He could see the page from _A Manual for Psychiatric Diagnosis in Psionics_ right there, in front of his eyes.

"The courts won't take your particular circumstances into account." Emma's voice seemed to come from very far away. "A judge will see psyonil as the only effective way to guarantee the safety of the public with an O-level telepath involved. The Mynodol isn't working and you've not had any success with talk therapy – strange considering I can never get you to shut up at staff meetings," here Charles snorted and Emma smiled thinly. "I want to try one more thing before we do anything… else."

"I thought you were going to say 'drastic,'" Charles said weakly.

"When I was talking with Steve earlier," Emma said, ignoring Charles's attempt at humor, "he said that he believes your guarding of the wound site and the range of motion issues are psychogenic in nature."

" _Psychosomatic? ___" Charles stared at her, faintly aware that his outrage was out of place, but unable to do anything about it. "Really. Because I'm a telepath, it all has to be in my brain, of course. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I was shot in the back and nearly paralyzed, oh goodness, no."

"According to your MRIs and X-rays, no it doesn't. And don't be petulant." Emma paused, flicking through some papers on her desk. "You were officially discharged from physical therapy three months ago, with follow-up visits every three months. Steve says you haven't progressed appreciably past the assessment at your last appointment. Which means you haven't been doing your exercises – "

"I know you talk to Raven," Charles interrupted. "And unless you're accusing her of lying…"

" – oh relax, I'm not. Believe me, she's not going to do you any favors here. So, in the absence of noncompliance or malingering, and with no medical indications of damage, Steve and I have decided that the guarding is another manifestation of your PTSD." Emma almost looked understanding. "You're shielding, Charles."

For a moment Charles thought she was talking about his psychic shields – they were almost always down these days, the better to catch the slightest whisper of threat (because he hadn't heard it that night, no; he'd been completely, idiotically oblivious) – but then realized she was, uncharacteristically for literal-minded Emma, speaking metaphorically. That small patch of flesh right by his spine, riding up against the vertebra, always _felt_ different, weaker, like the one flawed link in the chain that would break and break him too. It made sense to guard it.

"Physio distracted you, as did healing." Charles had the sense that Emma was, finally, drawing to a close. "You were able to channel energy that would otherwise go to anxiety into getting better. But now you don't have that distraction, and as a consequence both your mind and body are suffering."

"So what, in order to keep me out of the courts you want Steve to torture me some more?"

"Oh no… Steve's had enough of you." Emma sighed wistfully. "Although I don't understand why you wouldn't want him to put his hands all over you. He has biceps like baby ball pythons, Charles." Shaking herself, and smirking at Charles's blush, she added, "I've asked Steve to give me some recommendations for certain… professionals. And, as it happens, I can second the recommendation on one of them."

"Can I see the names of these miracle workers?" Charles asked.

Emma handed him a typed list. Charles scanned it, blinking a few times at the names and trying to work up something more articulate than noises of surprise.

"These are _yoga_ studios," he said. "The Peaceful Peach Studio. The Serenity Center. The Modern Yogi. _Please_ tell me you're joking." He waved the paper at her to emphasize his point.

"I don't even wish I could tell you I was joking," Emma said. Her blue eyes had gone hard, a reminder of diamond in them. "I hope you're not insulting an ancient tradition of bodily and spiritual discipline just because you want to be shirty with me."

"The Peaceful Peach, for god's sake," Charles mumbled. He gave her his best disbelieving look, the one he used to give his students when they tried to plagiarize. "You want me to stand in a room and contort myself while in the presence of… of lithe, graceful college students?"

"I don't know why you're complaining," Emma said. She leaned across her desk to indicate one name on the list with a flawlessly manicured fingernail. "This one, the Iron Flower. It's run by Steve's friend. And," Emma sighed again, "he is _very_ competent."

The tone of Emma's voice suggested the owner of the Iron Flower was competent in areas other than yoga, or in addition to it. _Diminished interest in sex and withdrawal from intimate relationships_ , Charles thought, trying to dredge up some kind of hormonal response to the promise of watching a handsome, sweaty yoga instructor doing sun salutes or whatever it was yoga instructors did. He couldn't quite manage it.

" _Mens sana in corpore sano_." Emma leaned back, folding herself neatly back into the pale leather embrace of her chair. "A sound mind in a sound body, Charles. You always preached how important that is for psionics, right next to your line about rage and serenity."

"Are you going to give me a lecture about being a hypocrite?" _On top of threatening me_ , he couldn't help adding silently.

"Not today, but I will if you don't go and sign up for the beginner's class today," Emma said tartly. "And I happen to know that they're having a special right now – twelve lessons for the price of ten for new clients, so I suggest you beat the ravening hordes of lithe, graceful college students down there."

* * *

Before going down to the Iron Flower (which was located suspiciously near the office, almost halfway between Frost and Xavier Psychiatric and Emma's apartment), Charles detoured two buildings over to SHIELD Physiotherapy and his traitorous physical therapist.

Steve Rogers did, in fact, have biceps like baby ball pythons, and right now he was using them to support a client as she pushed herself and her walker down a yellow line. Charles remembered that damned line; it functioned as a guide to help the eyes direct the body straight ahead, and to remind the brain to keep the feet from knocking into each other. _I couldn't even walk_ , he thought, and had to swallow back anger. It tasted bitter, the way it always did.

After the patient and Steve reached the end of the line, Steve said something quiet to her that had her smiling. Charles, on edge and hyperreceptive, felt the wash of happiness from her, the brief, sour spike of _but I want to curl up and die, I can't do this_ , before Steve was talking to her again. Whatever he said helped; the sharpness faded away and the woman let herself be guided to her wheelchair, and pushed herself over to where a man – her husband, Charles realized – was waiting for her with a hug and a bottle of water.

"Thought I felt you," Steve said as he came up. He offered Charles a very large hand to shake, and Charles took it. "And I think I can guess what you're here for. It's a recommendation I make to all my patients if I think they can use it, Charles. Heck, I sometimes make it anyway if I think they're stressed or worried about getting back into exercising."

The problem with Steve was that he _absorbed_ negativity and gave it back with a sort of cheerful sarcasm that Charles found impossible to react to. At least he could snap at Emma. He could snap at _Raven_ , even if it left him feeling terrible afterwards and he knew that he could never, ever apologize enough to her. But Steve just looked back with that all-American, whitebread face of his and smiled and said something that, coming from someone else, would sting a little, and Charles's fury would have to circle around helplessly for a while before rallying itself for another attack.

"It's _yoga_ , Dr. Xavier," Steve, eminently sensible, said. He clapped Charles on the shoulder, almost hard enough to knock the objections out of Charles's head along with the breath from his lungs. "It's not extraordinary at all. You can do it."

"I don't know about that," Charles muttered, but had to admit – because Steve had invariably been right about everything, even in the darkest first days when Charles could barely push his own damn wheelchair, much less _dream_ about walking – that he probably could.

* * *

Iron Flower was, according to its mobile site, not only a yoga studio, but also offered pilates and something called Krav Maga, which sounded like it involved Jet Li and complicated special effects. Figuring if he was going to do the thing he might as well do it properly, Charles stopped at a nearby sports store and bought the site's list of 'required' items: yoga pants (which were embarrassingly tight in the arse area), yoga mat, water bottle, and even though the poses were all done barefoot, trainers, because it seemed vaguely ridiculous to walk into a place wearing yoga clothes and sensible lace-ups.

The studio made its home in one of the many anonymous brick buildings that populated the neighborhood adjacent to Charles's office, only a silver lotus-looking flower in the window and the name in small print on a sign by the door indicating it was not the tattoo shop or natural foods store that straddled it. Charles stared at the door for a long moment, peering in through the glass and vaguely hoping that the studio would actually be closed, before reminding himself _you can do it_ and pushing his way.

A young woman, maybe Raven's age, was behind the counter. She looked lithe and graceful and college-aged, which was instantly depressing. If his telepathy hadn't been clicking along h would have thought the intricate black lines over her shoulders were tattoos, but in his mind's eye he could see them unfurling and transforming into delicate gossamer wings.

Of course Emma and Steve would recommend a mutant-friendly establishment. Something in Charles relaxed at that. _You're safe here_ , he told himself, and breathed in through his nose again. _Not like last year._

"Hey," the young woman – Angel – said. "Can I help you?"

"I…" What was he supposed to say, "I'm here under duress, because my therapist gave me a choice between being committed and medicated or doing this?" Probably not diplomatic. A year and another lifetime ago, Charles would have known exactly what to say; he would have told his patients how to navigate their lives, that they only had to give the explanations they wished to give and nothing else.

"I saw there's an ad for new clients," he said after a long moment that involved Angel staring at him expectantly. "The twelve for the price of ten?"

"Oh sure," Angel said brightly. Her mind steadied now that she was back on familiar ground and not wondering who the weirdo was. She pulled a clipboard and pen from underneath the desk and thrust them at him. "You're in luck; we've got just a couple of slots left for Erik's class. Just fill those out and you can start this afternoon, if you want."

Charles wondered distantly if Emma hadn't specifically waited until today to spring the "yoga or commitment" line on him. Feeling vaguely mutinous but unable to vent himself on Angel, Charles retired to a chair in the corner and filled out the forms. Address and payment method, release of liability, how did you hear about us (he wrote 'Internet'), a question about being added to the studio's mailing list for offers and special seminars. He checked no on the last one.

With that done, the only thing to do was watch Angel as she prepared the studio, and investigate the studio itself. Charles had seen the yoga and meditation rooms in the university gym and had formed the impression that they were all about the same, with posters of lithe, graceful people doing inspirational if impossible things with their bodies. The Iron Flower had posters, but they were abstract, some of them labyrinthine patterns that hurt Charles's eyes to follow, the others with no figures at all, only colors transitioning seamlessly from one to another. Soft music played, not the strange waterfall-wind-in-the-forest white noise Charles expected, but something involving a stringed instrument being plucked or struck in some way.

Despite himself, Charles liked it. Just a little bit.

One by one, the other students trickled in, most of them young but just as many – Charles observed this with relief – around his age or older, all of them with their yoga mats rolled up and tucked under their arms. Three of them were obviously mutants, one of them a tall stork-like young man with prehensile toes talking to a young woman with thick auburn fur. The third, a squat man with a froggy face, hopped in just behind them and ahead of a surly-looking man with an excess of body hair and a ferocious scowl.

Charles looked for some thoughts to tag onto. Angel, as the expert, was the logical choice; the slightest flex of his power opened up the memories associated with the pre-class routine. All the students would place their mats on the floor, at least two arm widths apart, with plenty of space for stretching in front and behind. Water bottles and trainers went into the cubbies along the far wall; everyone stopped before walking onto the floor proper to pull their shoes off, all except for Hank the stork-like one, who didn't wear them. Charles followed the neat pattern of her thoughts, and soon found a position near the cubbies, at the very edge of the full-length mirror that ran from one end of the studio to the other.

 _Farthest from the door_ , he told himself. He was safe enough in here, but the window – that was plate glass, surely. It would shatter if anything should happen, if the man from that night ( _William Stryker_ that was his name) should show up again (he's in jail; your lawyer called you with the verdict. He's in jail and he'll be there for years). Charles folded himself onto his mat, the way Angel's mind showed him, and breathed in deeply and shut his eyes.

Against his private darkness the others' thoughts came even more loudly. _No_ , he told himself fiercely, clutching at the threads of his control, _you came here so you would not do this anymore. Physician, heal thyself, et cetera et cetera_. Hank was thinking about his experiments, the surly one, Logan, about his girlfriend bugging him to give up cigars despite his healing factor ( _your healing factor can't heal my apartment of this stench_ ). Angel was already moving on to cuing up the music selection for the class and rehearsing her "welcome the new student" speech.

He pulled himself back, hunching in on himself, and broadcast as best he could _I'm fine, I'm not in my corner freaking out, nothing to see, nothing –_

"Excuse me," said a quiet voice. A hand touched him – Charles nearly came out of his skin and only remembering where he was kept him from giving the intruder a brain hemorrhage – but as quick as that the hand was gone and its owner was pacing to take up his place in front of the class.

The voice and hand in question belonged to a tall man, all long clean limbs and barefoot, serious-eyed as he looked out over the twelve students sat in front of him. This time last year, Charles would have found him attractive – infuriatingly so, with his cut-glass jaw and cheekbones, brown hair that shone a bit red in the downlights. He even managed a sort of elegance in the long black yoga pants and dark gray t-shirt, and in former days Charles would have forgone actually participating in the lesson and just watched the poetry of him.

"Welcome," just a touch of accent, another entry on the Charles Xavier's Personal Turn-Ons Inventory. The man, now obviously one of the instructors, continued, "I'm Erik Lehnsherr, and I'll be leading Introductory Yoga for the next twelve weeks. Angel," he paused to indicate her, "will serve as the model, showing you the basic, modified, and more advanced versions of the poses we'll be learning. For those of you whose mutations diverge from the form these poses were intended for, I'll be walking the room to analyze your posture and help you adapt the pose to your physiology."

 _That_ was fascinating, a swift little quiver of interest. Of course, Charles thought, of course a mutant-friendly, possibly mutant-only, yoga studio would strive to adapt the discipline to the particular needs of its students.

"We all come together in brotherhood and respect." The words were soft on the surface but unyielding not far beneath; Charles had the sense of steel scaffolding in Erik's head, his mind firmly fixed and unbendable. "During the hour we're here, there's no rivalry among us. There's no _out there_ we're forced to deal with every day. Got it?"

Everyone nodded. Charles found himself nodding along.

Without further ado Erik flicked on the music, and he did it with his ability, _oh quite marvelous, metal and magnetic fields_ , Charles thought. He kept his eyes on Erik even as Angel settled onto her own mat and took up what Erik called _sukhasana_ , "easy position," he clarified, although Charles had filched it out of his mind. Charles obediently crossed his legs and rested his wrists, palms up, on his knees.

Erik was wandering the room, murmuring instructions that sounded more curt than soothing to the various students. One girl was afire with embarrassment; Charles tuned her out, because it was either that or start blushing himself. _No, don't hunch your shoulders_ , Erik grumbled to Hank, _be proud of your height; it's nothing to hide_. He let himself drift with Erik, not paying much attention to the words only the dedicated focus of his mind. It was refreshingly present, uncluttered. _Safe_ , maybe, even though that didn't seem to be the right word for what Charles sensed lying deep underneath.

And then, almost before Charles knew it, Erik's hand landed on his shoulder and he heard the soft pop of cartilage of Erik knelt with a wince.

"Don't hunch," he said firmly, pushing Charles's shoulders back with one hand while the other, perilously close to where Stryker's bullet had gone in, pressed at Charles's spine. "In sukhasana, you're relaxed but also aware of yourself. Think about the balance of your body. Do you feel how," and here he pushed Charles back into his former position, "off-center you are?"

"I…" Charles swallowed hard. "I don't know."

Erik said nothing; Charles withdrew from his head quickly before finding out what, exactly, Erik thought of his incompetence.

"Here," Erik said instead of pointing out that Charles was perilously close to a meltdown, "sit up a little." Charles obeyed, distantly aware that Erik was touching his hip now, fingers curved close along his buttock. "Close your eyes," Erik said softly, but with an edge that expected Charles would obey this too, even though Charles thought frantically _no no no that is a terrible idea_. "Close your eyes; it'll help you feel your body in space much more clearly. Don't roll your tailbone underneath you; when you do that, you lose all the support in your spine. Make sure you're sitting only on your sitz bones." Erik's hands in very inappropriate places indicated what he meant.

"Ischial tuberosities," Charles mumbled. "That's – that's what they're called."

Erik made a soft noise of amusement. "Ischial tuberosities is a mouthful. Now, pull your shoulders back so your chest opens; your spine should be engaged, but not stiff. You should have enough room to breathe deeply without feeling your lungs are going to come up into your shoulders." One of those hands – large, warm, competent, Charles thought – pressed in on his diaphragm. Charles inhaled and exhaled in time with Erik, slow and deep and in and out, catching old cologne and sweat and the rhythm of Erik's pulse.

"Good," Erik murmured, "relaxed but engaged," and Charles realized it _was_ good. He couldn't help a smile, happy with mastering something so basic as sitting and taking pleasure in Erik's satisfaction.

And like that Erik was up and moving again, explaining the reasoning behind the _sukhasana_ and why they were beginning with it.

The next hour passed in much the same way, moving slowly and stage-by-stage through the poses while Angel demonstrated and Erik corrected. 

Raven, Charles thought while he was upside-down in downward-facing dog and trying not to imagine what his ass looked like thrust up into the air, would be proud of him. Strangely, imagining her pleasure bolstered him against the very large part of him that hated to be made a joke of. ("Ugh you're so _serious_!" Raven would exclaim in frustration. "You need to lighten up, Charles "I'm an old fart at thirty-three" Xavier!") He needed to make the past year up to her, he told himself as Erik called for them to transition into Cobra – "remember, the key is not to over-arch; you don't want to strain the spine. Press your hips down into the floor," which was… Charles was not going to get his first inappropriate erection in twelve months at his first yoga lesson – and where was he, oh yes, Raven… She'd had her own difficulties, and Charles needed… he needed to do something.

"And come back to Sukhasana."

With a start, Charles came back to himself before he could remember the specifics of the pose. Don't sit on your coccyx, he reminded himself; distribute your weight evenly on your sitz bones, shoulders back, spine steady. Breathe deep, in and out, touch thumbs to forefingers.

"Namaste." Erik said, with a brief incline of his head, as close as a person like Erik could ever get to bowing. "Thank you."

That was the end, Charles realized dully. He glanced at the clock to confirm it, and it was indeed three minutes to five.

And, he realized shortly after that, he hadn't thought of protecting himself or searching out a threat even once.

At the front of the classroom Erik had already flipped off the music and begun to tidy up. The other students, after saying awkward good-byes to each other, collected their gear and filed out. None of them spoke to Charles other than Hank, who asked Charles to excuse him as he reached past him for his water bottle, then nervously pushed his glasses up his nose (they'd been sliding off all session) and bustled out, his feet slapping on the wooden floor.

Charles sat down to tie his shoes, although the dull, tense patch of muscle in his back felt as though it could actually handle the stretch of bending over. Erik was over by the desk, scribbling something and bubbling with annoyance, startling against the tranquility of five minutes ago. It seemed impolite to walk out the door without saying good night or thank you in the very least, and Charles – remembering that he'd used to be indomitably social, much to the embarrassment of his friends – stopped and hovered by the desk and said, "Thank you."

"You're paying me," Erik said archly, a sidelong smile that exposed a worrying large amount of teeth. "But you're welcome. Did you find what you came here for?"

"What?" Charles blinked at him. "I… What does that mean?"

"Mutants come here for most of the same reasons humans do. Some of them want something to do for an hour once a week," Erik's tone made it clear what he thought of those people, "but some of them need a bit more. Security. Confidence the human world doesn't give them. A way they can come to accept their powers."

 _I had confidence and security, and a madman took it away._ Charles swallowed. Erik was _looking_ at him, far more knowing than Emma, pale eyes free from judgment but demanding the truth all the same.

"I lost something," Charles muttered, unused to feeling so exposed but compelled to honesty.

"What?"

"I…" _I don't know._

Emma said he'd lost control, Raven said he'd lost perspective, and those were right as far as they went. But Emma's theory and practice were built on control, and Raven's assessment of him was based on the brother he'd been before Stryker had shot and nearly paralyzed him. He'd come here looking for control, a way to get it back and avoid the nightmare of having involuntary commitment on his record, but the gaping hole he found in himself – that, that was something else again, something that had knocked him off his equilibrium.

"I'll let you know," he said at last, when Erik's expression turned from expectant to annoyed to concerned. "I'll let you know when I find it."

"I hope you do then," Erik said, in a tone that implied expectation, rather than hope.

Angel registered on the edge of Charles's awareness, which had contracted to focus, like sunlight through a magnifying glass, on Erik. Before she could catch him and drag the moment out, and before Erik could see any more of what was going on in his brain, Charles muttered a quick goodbye and left.


	8. A yoga fic [2]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next afternoon, as soon as Raven left the apartment, Charles did too.
> 
> Thirty minutes later, he arrived at the Iron Flower. He stared at the door and the metallic flower stenciled on it – no inlaid, remarkably – long enough to work up a creditable cover story to explain his presence, and marched in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second, completely unplanned, part of the yoga fic! I figure this may run to four parts or so, and may also be polished up, made less incoherent, and reposted separately.

**Chapter two**

Erik was usually content to let Angel take care of the paperwork associated with the studio. This was not because Angel was more patient than he, or more competent, but had rather more to do with the fact that she was the junior instructor and his employee.

"Can I help you find something, boss?" Angel said, heavily sarcastic and insubordinate. "If you actually paid attention to the paperwork besides making noises about how it has to be immaculate, you'd find what you're looking for."

"The new student paperwork," Erik grunted. "I just wanted to check something."

"We only had the one today," Angel said, reaching past him for a manila folder with _New Clients_ stickered to the tab. "Blue eyes, over in the far corner. You almost tripped over him coming out of the office."

Erik growled at her and took the folder. "I _know_ that. I do actually remember clients' faces." Some of the time. He flipped the folder open.

"Charles Xavier," he said.

"Yeah." Angel squinted at him, her expression uncomfortably knowing. "What's up? You know the guy?"

"In a manner of speaking." Erik stuffed the folder containing Charles Xavier and his biography and credit card number back into its place. "Thanks, Angel."

* * *

The calm, even disturbed as it had been by Erik asking uncomfortable questions, lasted until Charles got to the stairs leading down to the subway.

Bodies, bodies everywhere and _minds_ , all of them pressing up on him closecloseclose, too many to sift through and more coming all the time, most of them a haze of preoccupation ( _don't make eye contact god that fucking meeting thought I was never going to get out wonder if I'll have a boyfriend when I get home man I'm starving_ ) and a few more directed ( _asshole get the hell out of my way what the fuck is he doing just standing there gonna miss the train move move MOVE_ ). Those made him flinch and back away from the dark, humid mouth that opened into the underground and swallowed the pedestrians streaming past him and spat them back out again.

"House," Charles told himself. "Or office."

Raven would kill him if he went back to the office; that had been one of the first signs something was wrong, a kip on his office sofa turning into an overnight stay because he couldn't face the post-work crowds. She'd kill him if he trekked all the way out to New Salem – she'd threatened to change the locks on the house if he did – because he had worn himself ragged with the commute just for the safety and quiet, and it wasn't fixing anything.

A taxi back to the apartment was a compromise – an expensive one, but Raven didn't have to know about it.

She sussed it out anyway once she saw him turn up a half-hour late, "because I just so happened to see that the trains were all on time today, for once," she said, her yellow eyes flashing. "But at least… you didn't have another episode today, did you?"

The anxiety in the question warmed him, although he had the sense it shouldn't.

"No," he told her, and took some comfort from her unabashed relief. "It was close but I was okay. I got out of it."

"That's good." Raven returned to rummaging in the paper bags on the counter. "I almost thought that you had a hot date or something and didn't tell me, and it would have sucked for you to miss Chinese and movie night. I got you General Tso's anyway, because I am an awesome sister and you don't deserve me"

"You are, and I don't." Charles hugged her from behind, sneaking in a quick tickle that made her yelp and squirm; if she heard the heartfelt quietness of his words, she refrained from comment; Raven didn't do _icky-sticky emotions. Not like you, Charles._ He sneaked a cashew. "What are we watching?"

"That movie with the sexy robot. Now get off or I won't split the third spring roll with you."

The two of them curled up in the living room, entirely too much food to split between them. Charles _felt_ the loosening in his mind, his telepathy relaxing to unfurl itself across the apartment, not vigilant but simply stretched out like a cat, aware of Raven as a bright, benign warmth and, more distantly, the people in the apartments below them, their thoughts slow as the day wound down.

If he took up easy pose while sitting on his end of the couch, it was entirely coincidental.

And if his thoughts circled back to Erik and the studio that night while he tried to ignore the surging of the city beneath his window… that was entirely coincidental too, and easily disregarded as he fell asleep.

* * *

_Case file number 981-X32, Dr. Frost's notes for Tuesday, May 12th._

_Charles is a Caucasian male, aged 32, of above-average education and intelligence, positive for the x-gene, psionic type, including telepathy (see Essex-Xavier Psionic Scale results) and empathy. He is classified as an O-type telepath and omega-level mutant, following the Revised Standard Mutagenic Ability Scale (RSMAS-II). He has no personal or family history of psychiatric disorders. According to self-reporting and medical history, he has not been hospitalized for incidents related to his ability._

_In July 2011, Charles was the victim of a shooting outside a restaurant at which he and two others were dining, with trauma sustained to the L2 vertebra and spinal cord as a result of a .38-caliber bullet. Due to his telepathy, narcotics were rejected, necessitating a medically-induced coma to prevent telepathic backlash. He was resuscitated after a week; pain was managed with non-narcotic analgesics. Pneumonia secondary to intubation was also of concern, hindering recovery. Dr. Jean Grey, neurologist (psionic subspecialty), determined no neurological damage had been sustained._

_After eight months of aggressive physical and occupational therapy, he achieved approximately 95% of his former mobility and was cleared for return to practice as a therapist specializing in youth psionic psychology and treatment. During this time he attended four sessions with a counselor at Columbia University on coping with the trauma of the shooting and injury, and preparing for a life that might need to be adjusted to provide accommodations for minor disability._

_In the past month, since his discharge from active therapy, Charles has reported increased feelings of anxiety, including nonspecific, spontaneous panic attacks and attacks triggered by stressful situations. Especially severe are those associated with crowded streets or open, crowded spaces (e.g. busy streets) and closed crowded spaces (e.g. public transport). To compensate, he takes private transportation or taxis and has taken to spending time at a family property upstate. His reactions to upsetting situations include typical panic behaviors, as well as defensive psionic responses. He reports that these incidents "simply happen" and feel as if they are never within his control unless he exerts himself._

_During intake, he indicated that he had decided to take personal time to continue to catch up on personal affairs left unattended during his convalescence and that the anxiety was likely due to being off his schedule. He expressed confidence that he would resolve his personal affairs "within two weeks," at which point he would return to work and his episodes will cease to be an issue._

_Both sleep and anti-anxiety medication are contraindicated at the time due to Charles's telepathy. In order to address Charles's anxiety without medication, I am ordering eight sessions of CBT, adjusted for mutant use (see_ NYU Handbook for Mutant-Oriented Cognitive Therapies _and accompanying workbook), along with exposure therapy to identify triggers and control responses to negative stimuli. The patient will asked to self-report on incidents of anxiety experienced throughout the week in order to begin constructing alternative thought processes and behaviors. Schedule follow-up for one week from today, and once a week for twelve subsequent weeks._

_Oh, Charles._

_End dictation._

* * *

Charles hadn't expected a miracle from one session at Iron Flower, and it was just as well, because he didn't get it.

He went to work the next day, still holding tight to the sense of Raven curled sleepily around him while she dozed through a terrible SyFy movie, and then went home trying desperately to ignore the building conviction that the woman striding along behind him was driven by some dire purpose. As he walked, increasingly curved in on himself, he remembered Erik's impatient orders for him and Henry to straighten up, and tried to square his shoulders.

Maybe it worked, or maybe the anxiety had receded because the woman following him had ducked into a coffee shop, driven by nothing more diabolical than her caffeine addiction.

The next day he stayed in, working from the home office and wondering how long it would be until he simply stopped going outside, if that was a viable alternative to psyonil and a forty-eight hour hold in a hospital.

Psyonil was tightly controlled, a Schedule-MI drug that had no obvious therapeutic effects except to block the telepathic apparatus in the brain. _No prescriptions permitted to be issued by a pharmacist. Hospitalization necessary to monitor side effects, which include: headache, nausea, tachycardia, psychogenic disturbances (hallucinations, delusions), coma, death_. Charles tried to imagine that, the utter numbness of not-being and not-feeling, and couldn't do it.

He'd never done it himself, written the order to commit a patient. Emma had done it once, when it had been a choice between that or the mutant leveling half the downtown. Charles worked with kids, some of whom had already come out of institutions or foster care, and taking a trip back would only drag up memories of those places. Even through the veil of time and the knowledge that those terrible scenes belonged to the history of someone else, Charles had to shudder, thinking of what some of those kids had lived through.

 _I wasn't a person_ one girl had said, touching the bandage tucked in the fold of her elbow. She had rubbed the skin raw over the injection site. _I didn't exist._

He'd pioneered new therapies for young psionics and written two books with Moira. _Balance_ , he told them all the time. _Let's see if we can't find the place where you can access your power, but only on your terms._

(Another girl, barely fifteen years old, with a history of brain damage. She would never be a fully-functional telepath. Charles had gone home that night and drunk himself into insensibility with Moira to keep him company. He wondered what it said about him, that he sometimes swung between depression and anger to handle his children's stories.)

Those memories followed him around the apartment, close enough to pull him down into something too anxious to be depression but too depressed to be anxiety. Raven kept glancing at him worriedly after she got home, but didn't chase after him to talk about it. There'd been too many fights about that already, although Charles wasn't sure he was happy to have won the decisive battle, the one that forbade Raven from bothering him about how he chose to handle his problems.

"We should do something tomorrow. See a movie and get coffee," she said, instead of saying what she thought, which was _Maybe you'll finally realize how much you need help after you freak out in the theater_ and not very charitable, but Charles deserved it.

"Why don't you and a friend go to the movie and I'll meet you for coffee?" Charles suggested, praying she'd take the compromise. "I'm too old and boring for most movies out these days."

"You'd better show up," she said, mock-threatening.

The next afternoon, as soon as Raven left the apartment, Charles did too.

Thirty minutes later, he arrived at the Iron Flower. He stared at the door and the metallic flower stenciled on it – no inlaid, remarkably – long enough to work up a creditable cover story to explain his presence, and marched in.

Predictably, it was busy – and not just busy, overrun with kids and their parents, the former nominally overseen by a tall, dark-skinned young man who managed to get about five children paying attention at any given time while the others milled around. Charles found his shoes being inspected by a four-year-old with green hair and was on the verge of saying something when he caught the edges of a familiarly-textured annoyance.

"Lorna!" Erik stalked up to the little girl. "Leave Dr. Xavier alone."

"Shooooooes," Lorna moaned, tugging at Charles's laces. "NEW SHOES."

"Yes, they're very amazing," Erik said, dry as dust, as he bent to pick her up. Lorna let go of Charles's laces with a low sound of protest, then transferred her attention to playing with Erik's wristwatch. Disengaging his watch from his wrist so Lorna could play with it, Erik grimaced. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Children are very determined."

"And sticky, and germ-covered." Erik transferred Lorna and her stickiness to a harassed-looking woman who had just come in through the door. He said something quiet and private to her, retrieved his watch from a protesting Lorna, and watched them leave, an expression on his face that made Charles both want to pry and leave it alone. "Is there any particular reason you're here, or did you want to get felt up by little kids?"

"I." The story he'd generated – asking about videos so he could practice some of the poses at home – suddenly seemed like the shabbily transparent story it was. _Improvise, Xavier._ "I wanted to know if perhaps there were spaces available in other introductory classes."

"Angel will have to check." Those pale, extraordinary eyes were fixed on him, intent under a forehead creased with puzzlement. Erik had crows-feet, just there and there, delicate lines like wear around the edges – not a sign of softening or vulnerability, but of use. Work. "Do you mind me asking why?"

"I told you the other day that I lost something." He watched Erik closely, one finger on the pulse of his thoughts. "I'd like to get it back."

Erik considered him for a long moment, and what he saw Charles had no idea.

"The kids are leaving in twenty minutes, or after they murder Darwin, whichever comes first," Erik said at last. "Stick around until then."

Charles did, only to discover that _twenty minutes later_ was two o'clock, when the studio closed for the day. Darwin and Angel kept darting him curious looks and seemed constantly on the edge of questioning either himself for Erik about his presence, but one quiet, warning huff from Erik was enough to silence them, as was the, "Why don't you two leave early, and I'll lock up."

It wasn't a suggestion. Darwin and Angel bolted.

The studio echoed with the peculiar resonance of an empty, open space. _Still_ , Charles thought, feeling his telepathy reach out as if to verify the emptiness around it. All it ran up against was Erik, who was turning down the lights and hauling two mats out onto the floor.

"Private lesson," Erik said, the curtness of his tone erasing any potential for Charles to read anything into the words. 

He sank down onto one of the mats, indicating for Charles to take the other. Obediently, Charles toed off his shoes and took his place, facing Erik directly. He had his back to the mirror and in the darkness and silence Erik stood out as something determinedly alive. Erik studied him silently, a flicker of satisfaction for Charles's posture.

"We'll work through the asanas we learned the other day," Erik said at last. His voice had fallen into that low, hypnotic rumble of before, when he'd talked Charles through his uncertainties in class. "But after that, you'll learn a new one. I'll help you with that. Do you want music?"

"No."

"Let's begin then."

Erik led him through the poses, occasionally growled orders for Charles to mind the tension in his spine – "You're careful of your lower back, but the more you tighten it, the more damage you do" – and to keep his breathing steady. In moments when he'd managed to settle into a pose, Charles darted quick looks up at Erik (somewhat awkward in certain positions), caught by the line of his neck flowing into broad shoulders, the power communicated in the tendon and muscle pressing at pale skin.

He was, Charles decided, very beautiful. The realization came on an indrawn breath, as if Charles were breathing it into himself along with air, and it settled into him, strangely peaceful, as if it were a truth that had simply been waiting for Charles to accept it.

"Eyes, Charles."

At the end, the tension of the previous two days had vanished. His telepathy drowsed in the back of his head, lazily keeping in contact with Erik's mind as if to reassure itself another presence was here. It had no inclination to hunt out beyond the studio, but settled comfortably in Charles's skull.

"Last, you'll be trying something new." Erik was in lotus position now, something that Charles highly doubted he himself could accomplish. His ankles wanted to ache in protest. " _Shavasana_."

"Corpse pose?" _Very close to the bone_.

"It's for relaxation and meditation," Erik said, ignoring the flicker of Charles's distress. "If you do it properly and for long enough, instead of rushing it like an idiot."

Charles snorted.

"Cognitive therapy uses meditative techniques all the time," Erik pointed out. "I can give you the studies, if you want."

Convinced by science, Charles followed Erik's instructions to lie back. Nervousness welled up when Erik told him to close his eyes and when, against his private darkness, he heard Erik's bare feet close by him and then the sudden, nearly-palpable warmth of Erik settling by his right shoulder.

"The key to shavasana is complete relaxation of all muscle groups," Erik began. "You start by focusing on your breathing, on the action of your chest and abdomen as they rise and fall."

His mind drifted in and out, both at once, like water spreading across a tabletop. It lapped against Erik, pooled in his own chest somewhere between his lungs. _Search yourself for tension – for fear, for anger, for grief, anything – and let it melt away. Don't forget it, but let it go for now._

Erik didn't forget anger; Charles had had that sense when they'd first met. What drove him wasn't peace or enlightenment, it was something else altogether. Something oddly familiar. Charles soothed an ache in the deep muscle of his calf, let his thighs and lower back melt into the cushion of the pad beneath him. 

_Good_ Erik whispered as he did that, his presence hovering over Charles, sheltering. _Stay like this a while_.

Charles did, listening to the rush of blood in his veins and the air in his nose, and Erik explaining quietly about the asana's purpose, _to integrate, not to sleep, but to remember the body and mind when they were in motion, to internalize what was learned_. His body felt like his own again, something familiar he could come back to.

"The shooting," Erik said, very quietly. "Is that it? Why you're here?"

The words were shocking as a bullet. Charles tensed, remembered posture at the last minute and strove to relax again.

 _Calm_ , Erik thought at him. He was solid as a rock, absolutely centered in himself, something to cling to if Charles were weaker than he was. _Deep in through the nose, hold it, out through the mouth. Very calmly, up and down_.

"How did you know?" _How did you know who I was?_

If Erik was startled at the direct, silent question, he didn't show it; whatever shock there was, was absorbed by Erik's straight-ahead desire to know more. "I saw your name in our new client list, and I remembered. You were in the news, when I was in Germany last year. A friend of mine from an advocacy group passed a link to me."

Of course there would have been news reports. Charles hadn't been allowed at the trial, given the risk of him tampering with the defendant or the jury. He had given his testimony and cross-examination by secure transmission; he'd had his lawyer call him with the verdict. There were times – nights, mostly, when he lay awake listening to his racketing heart – that he thought seriously about finding the prison they'd stashed Stryker in and doing the _tampering_ the judge had feared when the trial was beginning.

"You're tensing," Erik grumbled. "Don't force yourself to relax. Breathe through it, for the fiftieth time today. Focus here." He pressed firmly against Charles's chest, not enough to impede breathing, but to make Charles aware of it. "Don't pay attention to anything else. Not what happened back then; it's over, you can talk about it. It has no power over you. _Now_ , Charles."

And he _was_ suddenly, hyperaware, not in the racing-heart, light-headed way that preceded an episode, but of Erik's warmth and the steely constancy of his mind.

"Can you talk about it?" Erik asked, sounding faintly impatient – more like a demand than a request.

"I don't remember it." Charles stared at the blackness against his eyelids. "I have eidetic memory, probably associated with my mutation. I can remember almost anything very clearly, but not being shot. What I was doing before, yes… then nothing until I woke up a week later. They put me in a coma."

"Because of your abilities?" Erik shifted, his hand leaving Charles's chest like a weight being lifted off, and two fingers settled on his forehead. "I want you to relax your neck now. Your jaw. Don't clench it. Let the muscles in your face go smooth."

He wanted, very suddenly, to melt, wanted nothing more than to drift. His telepathy shook itself, wanting to unmoor from his body; he tied it down absently.

"Your abilities," Erik prompted softly.

"Narcotics are always contraindicated for telepaths." Lying on his borrowed mat, Charles felt very nearly weightless, the drifting dissociation that he thought must be like that spaceless, bodiless sleep, but peaceful, with no pain waiting on the other side of waking up. Only Erik's fingers at the center of his forehead anchored him. "I woke up and I couldn't move, I couldn't feel my legs. My sister was there, and she told me – she told me what happened."

"That _fucking_ human," Erik growled. His fingers retreated from Charles's forehead. The breath that followed was not calm; it rattled in Erik's lungs. "It was a hate crime."

"His son was a mutant. He thought I could… I could cure him of being one. I refused." _Stryker was in his office, outwardly calm but inwardly a seething cauldron, nothing but hate for Charles, his son, for his wife and her poisonous, corrupted womb. She must have cheated, no way could this – this thing be his biological son and damn this mutant doctor to hell for saying he won't help_. "What happened to Jason, I don't know. I contacted the authorities, because I suspected abuse and thought a mutant youth advocate could help him, but then I'd heard the family had moved. I tried not to think about it."

Erik remained silent, something to pour himself into, and with his body subdued and his telepathy off its guard, the words spilled out like a flood.

"I didn't sense him that night." 

_I was with my sister and my best friend. I remember I had pasta with shellfish and three glasses of wine; we were celebrating Raven's new job. I remember it was 9:37 when we left the restaurant and the street was crowded – people out having fun on Friday night. I remember I was happy, laughing. Raven had just told a joke. I even remember that. Do you want to hear it?_

"Not now, Charles," Erik said, uncharacteristically gentle.

_I turned to say something to Moira. I was going to say "Can you believe we're not related?" and then… Raven says they didn't see him at first. He was ten feet away when he fired. It was only one bullet. I never sensed him, not once._

Erik's hand settled on Charles's chest again, breathe deep in breathe deep out.

 _I want to kill him._ And that, that was what he had been aching to say, but could never tell Emma, or Moira, or Raven. Emma and Moira were friends and colleagues – a dear friend, in Moira's case, an exasperating one in Emma's – and he couldn't imagine how that confession would change their opinion of his professionalization. He couldn’t let Raven see how deeply he'd been hurt, or the rage percolating deep deep deep inside. _I want to rip his mind apart for what he did to me and what he wanted to do to his own son. And I'm angry that I won't let myself do that. I'm angry that I can't make him see understand what he did to me and make him suffer for it._

He was crying and no longer relaxed; his shoulders had gone tight again, despite Erik rubbing carefully at the taut muscle, the ridge of his collar bone. Charles opened his eyes, impatiently blinking back the tears and looked up at Erik, who looked gravely back down at him.

"I completely understand," Erik said. "And I would kill him too, if I could. Years ago, I would have done it."

And every word of that, Charles's telepathy told him, was the truth.


	9. Astoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.
> 
> – H.G. Wells, _The Time Machine_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for having no yoga fic today, but I had a truly terrible headache that persisted through the afternoon and I was too tired from dealing with it to write something completely new (and try to keep the very vague plot in my head at the same time). So tonight's update is another possible Big Bang thing that I'm trying to persuade into coherence. It's based on a plotbunny that jumped into my notebooks after reading a ficlet by helens78--which of course I cannot now find--and still needs some whipping into shape.
> 
>  
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Moira, Raven  
> Warnings: Holocaust references, off-screen character death  
> Advertisements: AU - canon divergence, dystopia/post-apocalypse, time-travel/wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey things, implied telepathic bonding, Nazi hunting, Charles being kind of a badass
> 
>  
> 
> Not that it matters because it's is not really relevant to the plot, but the title is from Mike Doughty's "Telegenic Exes #2 (Astoria)," which is one of my favorite songs at the moment and you should listen to it.

**Astoria**

There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.

– H.G. Wells, _The Time Machine_

 

**Teaser 1: 1962**

"I don't ask for favors, Colonel," the voice said smoothly. "I express my expectations… and I _expect_ you'll reconsider."

The wall muffled the reply – Hendry's reply, it had to be, from the familiar pitch. Moira paused in her search. Whoever it belonged to, the first voice was carelessly powerful, conscious of its owner's superiority. Not, Moira decided, particularly cultured, despite the velvet and gold ostentation of the study; then again, it seemed as though admission to the Hellfire Club didn't depend on that sort of thing. Moira shivered in her lingerie and thought, with some irritation, _case in point_.

Something, then – a sound, a howling whine like wind through power cables – and then the heavy, mortal emphasis of flesh – a body, it was a body, Moira thought – hitting the wall and rattling the books on their shelves. Another thump, this one softer, and that was the body landing on the floor. Hendry (and she knew that had been Hendry) was not a slight man. Moira crouched behind the desk, tensed for flight.

The voices started up again, the first one sleek with menace, Hendry's stuttering with disbelief, and they were _louder_ , Moira realized. Hendry's collision had knocked one of the walls ajar, and white light spilled through the opening. Still crouching, Moira stole over to that slice of light.

Through the crack in the wall she saw a sliver of room, this one modish and modern where the study looked to have been kidnapped from a Victorian mansion, mostly white surfaces and chrome. She could smell cigar smoke and the slow burn of spilled alcohol – scotch, maybe, a tumbler shattered on the tile. Dominating her vision, though, was a woman scantily clad in white, Hendry at her feet. Although the woman said nothing, the air around her crawled with menace; she was, Moira thought, the most dangerous thing here, far more dangerous even than the owner of the first voice, a man wearing a plush velvet jacket and a benevolent smile. The woman gazed down at Hendry, dispassionate and considering, her head tilting as if to take the measure of something small yet puzzling in its insignificance. Moira shuddered.

And then – _then_ , as Moira watched, the woman turned to crystal-ice-diamond.

Moira blinked once, hard, but even through layers of astonishment knew her eyes reported the truth. The light clung intimately to the facets and prisms of her body, the edges of it sharp as a carved jewel, and when her lips flexed in a smirk the light glittered coldly on her teeth.

"She's magnificent, isn't she, Bob?" That was Smoking Jacket. He redirected his smile from Hendry to the woman, who tossed her head coquettishly so her diamond hair chimed against her diamond shoulder.

_Oh god oh god oh god_. Moira sat utterly frozen, her mind a chorus of disbelief. Hendry was scrabbling weakly at the floor and the wall behind him, as if seeking to push himself away. _Oh god oh god_ , Moira braced her hand against the bookshelf, thinking to do the same – there had to have been a phone on the desk, she could call Levine for backup, she should just _leave_ and tell him the insanity from some safe space, she should never breathe a word of this, she should just _get the hell away from –_

"Wait," the diamond woman said, her head coming sharply up, "someone's here."

The crystal coolness of her gaze fell on Moira, and the hard lips smiled.

 

**1965**

The tunnels and bunker systems dwarf the mansion now – or would, if the mansion still stood aboveground and the brambles hadn't devoured its carcass. The corridors never fall silent, between the duty rotations and the unending white noise of the air scrubbers that clean out the ash and the radiation and the reminders of death. 

And then there are the minds, maybe a hundred of them at any given time. Even deep in the stillness of the earth, in the room Charles Xavier calls his own, he can't escape them. Although this far down the vents only sigh softly and the footsteps are distant, the other presences brush against him, felt mostly as pressure against his shields, hands pushing at anesthetized skin.

Raven, always Raven with him, though, bright and defiant. (Always.) And, Charles thinks, noisy.

"You need to let up," Raven snaps. The edge in her voice never softens, although it's an old argument and one she's lost more often than not, if only because Charles often tells her the same thing.

"I don't know how long it's been for him." Charles's reply never changes much, either. He absently straightens the sheets – fresh-washed and smelling faintly of lavender, an indulgence – and then, somewhat more absurdly, fixes the hem of his shirt where it's ridden up. "And I don't know if he's asleep whenever I go."

"Does it look like I give a crap about that? About _him_?" Raven snorts. "You were supposed to be looking for Hendry, and now you're…" She huffs, seizing her frustration and stuffing it back in a box. "I don't want to fight, but honestly, why should I care?"

Charles aches to say how she should care, how she _would_ , if only she knew him, but she would only say _I know him well enough, thanks_ , because what she knows of him is that he's the stranger who steals Charles from her. She's thinking about that, hostility shouted in her body's predatory shift and the anger that heats her mind like a flame. Light slithers over the long, jagged edges of Raven's scales as she paces the room, scowling at the bed, the small table with the water and the IV. Charles has his pill bottle in his hand; that gets a glare too, when he shakes one caplet out into his palm, but all Raven says is, "You need to get some new books at least, if I'm going to be stuck down here watching you be unconscious."

"You could let other people do it; you have responsibilities of your own, you know."

"As if." She makes a face when he dry-swallows the pill. "God, at least have a glass of water for that."

"I prefer to save it for after." When it comes to his own particular insanity (Raven's term), he rations himself strictly: water is too precious to waste on his hare-brained wild goose chase. ( _Hare-brained wild goose chase_ is also Raven's term.) The capsule goes down reluctantly, leaving a bitter trail at the back of his throat.

"You're so noble." It's not a compliment. Raven drops herself into the chair next to the bed. Under the ridges that are her eyebrows, her eyes gleam a ferocious and alien gold.

His heart hurts, looking at her, or maybe it's the drug. He sways a bit, reaching to the mattress for balance and is relieved to find it. Every time he does this, Charles thinks, it seems like a bad idea. But he can't stop himself from going back.

"Lie down before you fall down," is Raven's tart suggestion. He hadn't eaten earlier aside from a snack on the go – too much to do, always too much – and on an empty stomach the drug hits him like a freight train. 

Already his muscles are liquid, the relaxant in his system working its insidious, eroding tendrils into the iron of his control. He drops more than lowers himself into bed, Raven's hands quick to steady him and sort him out before moving to take off his boots, gentle even as her impatience washes over him. 

Always the moment of panic when his breathing and heartbeat slow, a side-effect of the drug he has to fight not to negate; the moment passes, not before he feels – distant, the movement belonging to another Charles Xavier – Raven lifting his head and shoulders so she can place his head in her lap. Her fingers briefly stroke through his beard before settling in his hair.

_You need a shave_ , she's thinking at him, loudly enough he would have overheard her even without the drug.

_Later_. 

The shift of her thighs under him reminds him of the next step; the rattle of plastic tubing shakes him with its unexpected loudness, as does Raven flicking her finger against the syringe to clear out the air bubbles. There is a heartbeat when the body tries to reassert itself and remind him he belongs to it, gone before the needle pierces the vein and Raven tapes a piece of gauze over it to hold it in place.

_Come back to me_ , Raven thinks-says, but he's already half-gone. 

With the drug in him, she's transfigured, thought bounded by the invisible shroud of her body, a tessellation of anger-concern-fear-love that is endlessly brilliant. If time weren't of the essence – Hank's only allowed him to stay under for four hours, despite Charles agitating for more – he'd stay to watch the endless changeability of her.

"Cerebro in a bottle," they call it. When it had come down to a choice between heating and lighting the bunkers and fueling what Raven charitably referred to as Charles's insane quest, the choice had been easy: using the generator to power Cerebro or using it to keep the rest of them alive. Convincing Hank and Cecelia to develop the drug – not very easy at all. 

For a moment he _is_ Raven, before he can step away, her fingers laced through his hair, the steady burn of her thoughts on him, like light focused through a magnifying glass. She is concern, she is rage, she is love, she's _Raven_ , the last comfort he'll have until he gets where he's going, and through her he hears the voices belonging to her near past.

Alex is back from recon as of three hours ago; Irene is still silent aside from a quiet admonition to Raven to close the door behind her (they fight, Charles's heart aches for both of them); Darwin wants to take out a foraging team despite Shaw's patrols being in the area (Raven agrees, as long as he takes Elisabeth and Logan with him; Betsy can shield herself and others from telepathic spies and Logan's FUBAR brain reads like static anyway); the kids are restless on lockdown; Hank – 

Her past blends into awareness of the others, all of them crowded into the underground networks of bunkers and tunnels. He could be trapped in them but there's too much of him to be contained even in hundreds of minds, in thousands, in the tiny pinprick that is his place in spacetime. In his mind's eye the world spreads before him, _here and now_ the dot that means _Salem Center, New York_ , and _there and then_ , strangely enough, is Broadway Station in Astoria.

That's the map, both space and time, and he can travel across them both. 

If he had lungs, he would take one last breath before the dive, but in this space that isn't space he has no body, only the ghost-shell of one that contains the awareness of his individuality. _Separate but transcendent_ ; it's something the philosophers from Before would have given anything to understand. Charles allows himself a brief flicker of amusement.

Faintly he can feel the probing edges of the hook. It's made of rage and pain and steely determination, and it's the thing that had snagged his consciousness behind the teeth and dragged it out of the timestream. His mind remembers the shape of it the way flesh and skin remember the shape and depth of a wound – only, unlike the knife or the hook, his mind knows how to meld around it, giving way in places and asserting itself in others.

It's what Raven doesn't understand. None of them understand it, or why Charles absolutely, firmly believes the man on the other end of his connection can help them.

For all of that, making contact again is a vicious shock – it really is a hook, taking away his will, his control, and he finds himself yanked violently back through the years – and how far, how long will he go, past the cancerous growth of Shaw's power in the east, past the first stumbling days of the world waking up to utter ruin, past the millions upon millions of minds crying out their first and final agonies (like a wall of fire; he thinks he'll be burned away), past cold water and a high, grassy plain and cobblestoned streets and finally to a skinny boy in too-small shirt who stares up at cruelly cheerful brown eyes and in between flashes of utter hatred and fury can only think _—let me die letmedieletmedieletme –_

* * *

In a tiny hotel room in Zurich, Erik Lehnsherr bolted awake.

_That dream again_. He brushed sweat from his eyes with a shaking hand and cursed at the weakness, then cursed at the clock when he registered the solid daylight coming through the window.

The hotel room looked exactly like the hotel room a few nights ago in Vienna, which looked like the one in Prague and the ones in Berlin, Rome, and Copenhagen. He glanced at the map pinned up on the wall, and at least that had changed; _Obersturmführer_ Deiter Hahn was no longer in the world and his photograph, once pinned over Rome, had burned away in the heat of Erik's lighter.

On the other side of a long night, though, Hahn's death felt far away. Erik pushed himself out of bed and stood, muscles unfurling reluctantly into a full-body stretch. The room felt over-hot with the sun pouring in through a south-facing window, and Erik's mind was slow with it and the fragments of last night's dream.

Not for the first time, he wondered if the dreams weren't Schmidt's doing in some way. They hadn't started until his time in the camps, a bizarre, incomprehensible answer to a twelve-year-old boy's prayer for something, _anything_ to come and take him away. Maybe it was better to call the dreams _the dream_ , because it hadn't changed since the first time Erik could recall it.

An echoing, empty space, all flawless surfaces. Metal nearby, calling to him with a clarity it never possessed in the absence of rage. Tracks, like those for trains, running off into the distance, down an endless tunnel covered in pristine white tiles.

"Hello?" He always said that, and his voice always echoed in the same way, the only thing other than himself to fill the empty space.

His last experience of trains had been the train that had taken him and his family to their deaths – his father to the ovens, his mother to Schmidt and his gun, Erik to a death that saw his resurrection as Schmidt's creature. But this place… something watched him, a kind, curious presence that settled itself around his shoulders like sunlight.

_Who are you?_ That was another question he always asked, always when he felt that, if he turned around, he could see whoever-it-was standing there and get an answer.

Erik wandered over to the window, leaning slightly against the frame. Underneath the plaster, the metal studs in the drywall sang mutely. He'd forgotten to open the window last night, Erik realized; of course it was going to be hot. With a flick of his fingers, he pulled the sash up and the dregs of the morning's cool air came in.

Why he was always so convinced another person stood by him, just beyond the corner of his vision, he didn't know. Why that person should be kind, and simply _there_ , like a benevolent but ineffective spirit, he had no idea. And why he didn't hate the very thought of anyone being witness to his confusion… he had no answer for that either.

_I'm going to find out who you are_ , Erik thought, directing the words to wherever the presence might be, and after sparing a laugh for imagining the words as a threat, turned away from the window to dress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There won't be an update tomorrow because I'll be gone pretty much all day long and won't be getting home until very late, or very early depending on how you define things, and won't have a chance to write. But I should be back on track with more yoga fic on Sunday!


	10. Service delay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw had given him little in the way of instruction, only _Locate the new recruit and either bring him here, or watch him until we can collect him_ , and he'd said _recruit_ as though the young man's agreement to join them was a foregone conclusion. How that could be, Erik had no idea; all they knew about this person was his youth, _likely_ between twenty-one and twenty-five, and Erik was in gods-be-damned _Oxford_. They had no immediate sense of his abilities, only that he was powerful; Emma had had the sense that the mutant didn't want to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hard writing post-catharsis conversations when you're hungover and still exhausted from a day of driving and a night of listening to amazing music. So no yoga tonight.
> 
> Instead, this is the third and final plot bunny that I'm turning over for the big bang. It's actually one of the first fics I ever started, and I got 500 words into it before it stalled and refused to go anywhere else. So I let it rot in the depths of my WIP folder until today, when I decided something should be done.
> 
> Pairings: would eventually be Erik/Charles (obvs.)  
> Also starring: Raven; Shaw and Emma in the background  
> Warnings: none as such, although elements hint at brainwashing/altered mental states  
> Advertisements: AU - canon divergence, AU - still have powers, Erik having a bad day, Charles being adorable, Shaw being devious

**Service delay**

_1962_

The service delay in King's Cross put the train on schedule to arrive at Oxford station in the middle of a late Sunday rush. Students, dragging themselves and their hangovers back from weekends in London, slunk shamefacedly by their professors and clutches of disapproving older women laden with shopping. The professors, distinguishable only by their age and tendency toward eccentric clothes, did not look much better than their charges. Hoots and clangs and warning shouts announced the departure of one train and the arrival of another, and the madness redoubled as latecomers fought the outgoing tide to get to the platform.

Erik Lehnsherr plowed his way through the immediate chaos of the station and out into a street that was, dismally, no less hectic. Once he'd established his position at a street corner, took a moment to consider the hustle and rush of the town and the impossibility of his assignment. A woman, equipped with a formidable umbrella and a glare that scattered a handful of students before her, pushed by him and fearlessly strode across the cobbles. Erik watched disinterestedly as a cyclist careened the wrong way down the street, on a collision course; a flex of the wrist and a flicker of intent, and the bicycle jerked, swerved to the right, and its rider tipped arse-over-head into the gutter. The old woman stumped across the street and vanished into a knot of pedestrians.

Passers-by laughed. Erik ignored that, and the cyclist's humiliation, and frowned up the length of Hythe Bridge Street, up which ran currents of university students and civilians. After a moment of indecision, he followed after them. _Might as well_. The flare of power – nothing, really, but the most he had allowed himself since leaving Denmark that morning – dimmed slowly, the bright point in two days of futility.

Shaw had given him little in the way of instruction, only _Locate the new recruit and either bring him here, or watch him until we can collect him_ , and he'd said _recruit_ as though the young man's agreement to join them was a foregone conclusion. How that could be, Erik had no idea; all they knew about this person was his youth, _likely_ between twenty-one and twenty-five, and Erik was in gods-be-damned _Oxford_. They had no immediate sense of his abilities, only that he was powerful; Emma had had the sense that the mutant didn't want to be found.

"I thought," he'd dared to say, "Frost would be coming with me."

"Emma," Shaw had said with a lingering and fond familiarity, "has much more important things to take care of." He'd offered Emma one of those confidential smiles, a confidentiality from which Erik was temporarily excluded. "She needs to smooth over some… rough edges with the Soviets, and I… well, the Americans need a bit of a nudge. At this stage, Erik, _delicacy_ counts." That smile turned on him, cajoling, a silent _Why are you questioning this?_ overlaying Shaw's patience with him. Erik, abashed, had looked away, and hated himself for doing it.

In the hurry to get on her plane to Moscow, Frost had barely had time to give him his treatment, the dulling psionic wall to keep back the headaches that were a side-effect of his power. Erik rubbed his temple, fingers searching for any fugitive pain. They found none, but the absence failed to reassure. _It won't cure the injury done to your brain_ , Emma had said the first time – or one of the first times, the memories were hazy – _but it'll make it so you don't suffer._ She'd caressed his face, and speaking aloud, said, "You shouldn't suffer any more, Erik."

The memory left him unsettled. Erik drew his coat closer around himself and slouched down the road. He was young enough to seem a student, although he hadn't felt young in years, and so in the surge and press of high spirits he felt anomalous. As he worked deeper into the warren of old stone and copper, the sensation became stronger. Dissipation and industry mixed together in the faces of the people he passed, the edges of a long weekend spent with a bottle and the knowledge of work still to come, and Erik tried to imagine himself here, as one of them, nursing strong coffee and reveling in sex and arguing his way through Kant, and couldn't do it.

He stopped once, to buy – or, after a tiny flex of his power, steal – a few newspapers, all local, even a handful of ridiculous-looking broadsheets that seemed to specialize in mocking the students of rival colleges and calling for uprisings against the tyranny of their own faculty. On a whim, the sudden almost-conviction that it was the way to go, he turned off down New Road, following the signs for St. Peter's and Pembroke. The traffic on Queen Street caught him up and hustled him along, slim channels of students funneling into cafés and tea shops. A glance at the old clock looming over the cobbles showed it was tea time, and reminded him he hadn't eaten since a cup of coffee and stale biscuit at King's Cross.

Despite the danger of death by bicycle or barely-controlled lorry, _the hell with it_ , Erik crossed Queen Street and, blinking, somewhat surprised, found himself in the doorway of a crowded, otherwise anonymous, café.

The café heaved and sweated, air damp with breath, warm from the urns of boiling water and the ovens behind the counter. Chatter eddied around him, most of which he ignored, and the other patrons, engrossed in talk and splashing milk into their tea, ignored him in turn. One of the only two people in the place not having tea, the surly-looking girl behind the counter, all but thrust a teapot, cup, and strainer at him and, softening a bit when she saw his expression, a sandwich. Erik paid with a scowl and elbowed his way over to the only table left in the place, wedged into a corner behind a pair of students.

As he waited for his tea to steep, Erik tried to concentrate on the papers. One of the students at the table in front of him, a young man, made concentration difficult; his voice hovered at the edge of Erik's attention, oddly insistent and penetrating, as though he were speaking directly into Erik's ear instead of to his girlfriend. 

Erik poured and swallowed a mouthful of anemic tea and forced himself back to the papers, flicking cursorily through the headlines in the vain hope of something to indicate what Shaw, grandiose and scientific to the end, liked to call "mutagenic activity." Shaw in those moments grated, despite the ever-present knowledge of what Erik owed to him – his life, the use of his abilities – and thinking of Shaw's huge, pleased smile as he sent Erik off on a wild goose chase shortened Erik's temper even more. As he read through the local news, his temper bridled and chafed and took itself out on the teaspoon, and twisted it beyond being salvaged. The young man sitting in front of him, close enough that he might as well have been sitting _on_ Erik's table, rubbed his temple and sighed gustily, and said "No, no, just a bloody headache again" in response to his girlfriend's concern.

Frowning, Erik shoved the newspapers to the edge of the table and dropped the spoon in his bag, and turned his attention to the pair of students, who, despite being tedious, were far more compelling in their self-absorption than the papers.

The young man had his back to Erik, but Erik still heard him as clearly as though they were sitting next to each other. He could see his friend much better, a girl of maybe eighteen, blonde and pretty, a girlfriend judging by her accent. Erik heard the heavy clink of china against china, and the blue sweatered-shoulders slumped briefly before straightening.

"Raven, honestly," the young man said in response to the meaningful look the girl, Raven, was giving him, "it's – I need to finish. Only a month, and it'll be over."

"It might as well be a year," Raven huffed. What Erik could see of her face was unhappy, demonstrative and open in a way he associated with Americans. Shaw was particularly intolerable like that. "You need to – "She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice dropped to a hiss, "Charles, we'll figure this out."

"After my defense," Charles insisted. "It's just the stress." Raven huffed again and muttered something Erik didn't catch.

His head dipped and he ran one hand through his hair, an unkempt mop that suggested finger-combing was the closest its owner ever got to a brush. Erik, reminded suddenly, rubbed tentatively at his own forehead – suggestion of a headache, _not again, not already_ , and shifted against the sudden curl of fear-uncertainty-pain, trying not to be obvious. The movement must have caught Raven's eye, for she glanced over Charles's shoulder and scowled meaningfully at Erik. Erik tried to look like he was absorbed in the _Oxfordian Anarcho-Socialist Society Newsletter_ or whatever it was, difficult with the distant ache flexing behind his eyes.

Charles was saying something, a low, half-whispered and fearful litany, _what's going on, what's happening to me?_ , and shaking his head as though in denial. Acutely aware this was something he was not supposed to be hearing, and stung by a conscience he usually ignored, Erik folded in on himself and made himself look at the smear of print on the page in front of him.

"I need," Charles said, more loudly this time, "I need to keep working, Raven. It's the only thing that helps… And I've got tutorial in just a bit. I should get going."

"As if you don't know everything about the subject already," Raven sighed. The sigh was equal parts fondness and exasperation.

"Sundays are easier for me," Charles said vaguely. "I get more done." He fussed with his satchel for a moment, stuffing in a few papers he must have been looking at.

"Okay, okay, fine." Raven leaned forward, blonde hair brushing the table. Erik lost sight of her face, but the fondness in her voice suggested a smile. "Tonight, though, you're taking it easy. Come over to Spinner's with me; you can get _tea_ ," her voice dipped into a fairly accurate impression of his Oxbridge accent, "and I'll tell you about my idiot customers, and I had better not have to drag you out of that stupid library to do it."

"I do love your customers," Charles said. His shoulders shook with a quiet, private sort of laughter. Raven leaned back, clearly pleased, and didn't seem to mind when Charles began to get ready to go. Erik rolled his eyes. 

"See you tonight, love." He stood, and turned, and Erik finally got a look at his face, young (of course), and finely drawn, blue eyes intelligent under the weariness. When he caught Erik looking he nodded at Erik briefly, a reflexive politeness that Erik associated with the well-bred, supplemented with a smile that was almost (almost) distracting in its spontaneity and honesty – one of those people, Erik realized, who was genuinely _nice_. He rolled his eyes again as Charles bent to give his girlfriend a chivalrous peck on the cheek and, after she returned it with a dramatic sigh, bustled out. Erik watched him go.

"What are you looking at?" the girl snapped, glaring at him truculently over her coffee cup.

"It's started raining," Erik said blandly, nodding at the picture window over her shoulder. Reflexively, Raven turned to look, and by the time she turned back with a mumbled accusation about eavesdropping weirdos, Erik had the barrier of the London _Times_ between the two of them.

* * *

The headache lingered long after the rain stopped, faint and menacing, despite the caffeine from the tea and subsequent overindulgence at a chip shop. Erik hid in the dark of his hotel room, trapped in the terrible, claustrophobic space between sleep and dreams, for the rest of the afternoon. When sleep came too close, his body going weightless and distant, fear rushed in, nightmares, not-memories, _the explosion hurls him off his feet, and then there is nothing forever, for a second, when he comes to his mother is staring at him, her lovely dark eyes fixed and empty, and he knows –_

He was frozen, _seven years old, he can't move for the fear_ , muscles paralyzed, the metal bedframe buckled in agony, his hand locked around the bedstead, also bent, _the gun in his hand, and he has seen a gun fired only once, in the movies, but his fingers know the shape of the trigger and something inside him knows the shape of the metal and its purpose, the abrupt and mortal sound_ , and with the explosion his heart jackknifed back into rhythm, and he was in his own body again, in this time. Sweat clung and turned clammy against his skin; his pulse jumped and galloped under his skin. The pace of it echoed in his forehead, where the pain lived.

With an effort he released his hold on the bedstead, and untwined his power from the death grip it had on the frame. _Calm, Erik, calm_ , and that was Shaw, his frequent reminder of Erik's failure. He breathed deeply – the first few tries were a struggle, his lungs refused to fill – and finally, finally, serenity came, or something like it. He lay in bed and stared at the terrible blank of the ceiling, slowly picking out the water stains as his eyes adjusted to the half-dark.

Eventually, his body unlocked and he stood. Standing failed to bring the rush of pain he'd been expecting, although it did bring dizziness and he had to lean against the windowsill for a moment until his balance came back. Fifteen minutes and a splash of water later found him out of his room and asking directions to a phone and a pub. The girl behind the desk scrawled directions to both, and Erik left without saying thank-you.

The streets had emptied throughout the day as the students returned to their rooms and their work, and the faculty faded back into their offices. Restaurants and pubs still bustled, solitary points of activity in an evening otherwise quiet against the chaos Erik recalled from earlier. Voices drifted along the street, an occasional burst of music and hilarity, humanity going unwitting about its business. In the middle of it, unobserved, a mutant huddled in an office he'd broken into and dialed an international number.

After reaching Riptide, who said only that Shaw had left for Florida and had the utmost trust in Erik's abilities to locate the new recruit, Erik refrained from leaving any sort of message. Shaw didn't accept excuses or the assumption that something might be impossible, and Erik, at any rate, had never been deterred himself.

He'd intended to return to his hotel after dinner, uncomfortable as it was, and save his strength for the frustrations of the next day. Memories of the afternoon nightmare made him reluctant to return, but fear that Emma's treatments might be failing made sleep a dangerous thing, and, with the worst of the headache gone, Erik found himself prey to a strange restlessness. It prickled under the skin, alien and unwelcome and refusing to leave, as though another voice were urging him to walk, and walk, and walk.

Instead of the overheated and overpriced interior of the Queen's Inn, Erik found himself standing outside Spinner's, at the edge of a pool of dirty light, shifting and uncertain and not entirely sure what he was doing there.

Unlike its brother and sister restaurants, Spinner's lay half-deserted, tucked between a stationer's shop and bookstore like an afterthought. It would explain why Raven – Erik wondered what it was that had him on a first-name basis with these people – had coaxed her skittish, overworked boyfriend there instead of some other, livelier place. The pub looked as though it had been a hallway the building's former incarnation, crowded with chairs, a gullet of a walkway that ran between the bar and a handful of booths and disappeared into dubious shadows. Erik, narrow like the pub itself, slipped in between the close-crowded chairs and their occupants, and took up a place at the bar.

The beer was passable, although probably a mistake after the headache from earlier and the strange dreams his headaches always brought: Shaw behind a desk, smiling terribly –and he wasn't _Shaw_ but another name when he introduced himself to Erik only a few minutes before telling Erik to move a Reichsmark or his mother would die. Erik winced against the memory of the dream – tonight's iteration included straps wrapped around his wrists and ankles, a cage holding his head tight to a table – and swallowed it along with the beer.

Someone jostled him so beer sloshed at the rim of his glass, over, splashing on his hand. Erik bit back a curse and the impulse to repel the offender with every bit of metal on him – there were cufflinks, belt rivets, watch; he could do it, or maybe just crush the idiot's wrist – and turned to give said offender the full benefit of his glare.

It was Charles, Charles who had materialized from the shadows and cigarette smoke somewhere – the ones behind the bar, maybe; Erik had not been looking closely. Charles, however, _was_ looking at him closely, blue eyes tired but still alert, flicking over him as if pulling together puzzle pieces or searching for an answer to a question.

"Oh," Charles said after a moment, "I – I saw you in Peabody's this afternoon."

"Yes," Erik said. He hadn't noticed the name of the tea shop.

Charles nodded quickly and smiled, as if pleased to establish the connection, and asked the bartender for a whiskey and vodka tonic.

"Are you a student?" Charles asked, the bartender temporarily forgotten.

"Tourist."

"Ah." Charles's brow furrowed. "It must be – Spinner's isn't quite what most tourists go for, coming here. There are much nicer places."

Most places would be nicer than Spinner's, Erik reckoned. He said so, and Charles laughed.

"I was looking for something cheap and not crowded," he added, when he realized that Charles was probably looking for some explanation for Erik's presence in a student dive. "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation from earlier, and thought I would take it as a recommendation."

"Yet further proof eavesdropping doesn't pay," Charles murmured. His smile was warm – odd, considering Erik was a stranger, and Erik was entirely unused to having that sort of pleasure directed at him. Shaw's was of a different order entirely. "I'm very sorry that you were led astray, my friend. Can I buy you a drink to make up for it?"

"This one is more than sufficient," Erik said, which drew a soft laugh from Charles.

"They do a rather nice Scotch here," Charles said after a moment. The bartender returned, pushing a tumbler of whiskey and frost-dappled glass of vodka across the counter. Charles handed over a note in return but, instead of retreating to his table (Erik, glancing over his shoulder, saw Raven there, glaring and tapping her foot impatiently), made good on the threatened drink, saying, "Thomas, could you get another for my friend here?" and gesturing to the tumbler.

"That's really not necessary," Erik said, more stonily this time.

"You look like you need it." Charles waited until the second glass of whiskey materialized, held up his own in a silent request for a toast, which Erik answered, and swallowed a mouthful. "Long travels?"

Erik took a swallow of his own whiskey. The burn would have been better without the lingering aftertaste of the beer. "Something like that."

Charles sipped his drink and leaned against the bar, apparently lost in thought. Erik let the silence ride, somewhat bemused by Charles's instant and effortless friendliness – he'd heard of this sort of person but had never actually encountered one – and castigating himself for wasting time in a seedy pub on Oxford's dark side when he should have been resting and preparing for the next day's hunt. Maybe it was the exhaustion leftover from the headache, or the itch of the knowledge that Shaw had set him an impossible task (and Erik, for all his gratitude, could not do what Emma could), but Erik found himself reluctant to return to his room and the silence.

Instead, he sipped his whiskey too, and watched Charles out of the corner of his eye. He'd become good at looking on undetected, and Charles seemed lost in his own drink, blue eyes lidded and curiously hazy and far-away. The rest of him was much the same as before, including a cardigan that looked as if Charles had stolen it from a pensioner and shirt undone at the collar. Even with Erik sitting Charles was not tall, and with his shoulders drawn in he seemed even smaller, but there was a satisfying solidity to him, as if he were the only person in the smoky, silent pub other than Erik who was real.

In the midst of these thoughts came an odd twist of longing and regret. Erik wasn't particularly accustomed to feeling either of those things – longing for someone to _understand_ , the sense he might be in the company of someone in whom he could confide. He'd always known Shaw, Emma, and the others understood – Shaw had saved him from the Germans, Emma had seen the deepest, most painful recesses in his head – and they all knew their goal and the importance of their brotherhood. Longing or regret had little place in Shaw's plans, and Erik had never felt compelled to confide anything in anybody.

 _You allow yourself so little_. Memories stirred, down in the place where the dreams and headaches lived: his mother holding his hand while he lit a candle, which made no sense because he had always been too young to hold candles, even with a parent guiding him. His parents had died when he was six; Shaw had saved him –

"What have you managed to see so far?" Charles had shaken himself from his own thoughts but, despite the curiosity in the question, had begun to rub agitatedly at his temple, muttering to himself.

"A lot of churches and the inside of a train," Erik said, in a tone that he hoped would indicate he had no further interest in the conversation. He had to _leave_ , the mutant wasn't going to show himself just because Erik had been broadcasting hope and irritation out into the ether.

"Oh, there's rather more than that to see," Charles continued. His voice had tightened and he looked distinctly unwell. Concern, another emotion with which Erik was largely unacquainted, rose up. Something of it must have showed on his face, because Charles waved a hand and said, "Just a headache. Students today were terribly clingy."

"I see," Erik said, and let the silence fall again while he finished the drink, which had lost much of its flavor and become only a sour burn at the back of his throat. His head had begun to ache again.

He had just decided to make his excuses and vanish back to his room when the rapid approach of footsteps and metal – earrings and rings (both expensive), buckles on a jacket (also expensive) – pulled him from his half-formed resolutions. He looked over Charles's shoulder again and saw the girlfriend, mouth set in a stubborn, irritated line, weaving her way through the crowded tables.

"Charles!" Raven barked. She stalked up to them in a flurry of blonde hair and indignation. "Charles, are you planning on – " Her eyes, which were also very blue, fell on Erik. "You! Creepy eavesdropping guy from earlier!"

"I am very sorry you were talking loud enough to be heard from across the room, much less one table away," Erik said with as much sarcasm as he could manage. Raven glared at him.

"Raven," Charles said repressively. He'd managed to straighten up and hide most of the pain. " _Raven_ , it's all right. Erik, this is my lovely sister, Raven. Raven, Erik."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Raven said, sounding anything but. She redirected her glare to her brother. "You look terrible, and I haven't gotten my drink or finished telling you about what Maria said to that douchebag from Oriel."

"Oh, of course." Charles shifted so Raven could snatch her mostly-melted drink up. "Would you mind telling me on the way home?"

"As long as you don't fall over," Raven said tartly. She belted the drink and set it back down and, with a supplementary frown for Erik, asked if they could go.

"It was lovely talking with you, Erik," Charles said, and despite the alcohol, the hour, and the painful tightness at the corner of his eyes, he sounded like he meant it. "I hope we'll meet again."

"Good night, Charles," Erik said, and traitorously found himself hoping for the same thing.

It wasn't until five minutes later, drugged by alcohol and the long day and his own exhaustion, holding onto the beacon of the steel watch he'd left in his room to get him back to his hotel, did Erik realize that Charles had never once asked his name.


	11. A yoga fic [3]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He lay there for a long moment, reading and re-reading the thoughts that lay printed at the very front of Erik's brain, as if they were a language he half-remembered. Erik sat quiet and let him look, no matter how long Charles stumbled over the words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, more yoga fic! This chapter is a bit shorter than the others; I may go back and flesh it out later, but it was hard to write. Oh, Charles.
> 
> (If you are just turning in, you'll need to read the first two chapters to understand this. Also, please heed the warnings!)
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Emma, Steve Rogers, Raven  
> Warnings: discussion and description of PTSD, emotional trauma, violence (referenced), people being dickbags  
> Advertisements: Oh, Charles

**Chapter three**

He lay there for a long moment, reading and re-reading the thoughts that lay printed at the very front of Erik's brain, as if they were a language he half-remembered. Erik sat quiet and let him look, no matter how long Charles stumbled over the words.

"You've never…." he began, more to hear Erik confirm _no I haven't killed anyone_ than to question.

"Of course not," Erik huffed. "But I'm fairly certain if I had, the court would have granted leniency based on extenuating circumstances… Assuming, of course, that the court didn't take my being a mutant into account."

"That doesn't sound…" Charles looked around what he could see of the yoga studio, returned again to Erik kneeling by him, Erik who was still touching his shoulder. "That doesn't sound too terribly peaceful."

"Peace isn't an option for some of us," Erik said, curiously tranquil and accepting despite the words. "What we can have is the resolution to continue living as we best can, and to acknowledge how we feel about what's been done to us."

 _I'm angry_. The thought came to him as if from outside, a suggestion planted there or the whisper from another mind. He tried to grasp it and settle it into its proper place. _I'm angry a hate-filled man tried to take my life because he hated me and hated his son, and I'm angry at myself for not sensing him._

"It wasn't your responsibility," Erik said quietly, and Charles realized that he'd been projecting that last. "You shouldn't blame yourself."

"Anger isn't logical," Charles said tightly. He could feel it crowding up under his breastbone, up his throat, tightening it and making his breath come short. "If I'd have sensed him, I could have stopped him. What if – what if he had shot Raven?" _She'd been blue that night, not hiding who she is._ "What if he'd shot Moira? I couldn't live with that."

"He didn't." Erik's hand migrated down Charles's arm – stroking, Charles realized, soothing in a rough way. Erik's fingers wore calluses, a few bumps that suggested broken knuckles. "And if he had tried to hurt them – whether or not he would have succeeded – you would have stopped him. And the shooting would still have been his fault, not yours. His actions were always outside your control, Charles."

 _But they didn't have to be_. Charles desperately wanted to avoid the debates over free will and autonomy in the context of telepathy; he didn't think he could bear it, hearing what someone as fiercely independent as Erik would think. Still, like prodding at a sleeping dog, he thought, _If I had sensed him, I could have done anything. Wiped his memory. Sent him someplace else. Made him shoot himself._

It gave him a certain satisfaction to imagine those things. From the half-smile on Erik's thin lips, Erik sensed that satisfaction as clearly as he'd heard Charles's words.

"I don't believe in peace in this world," Erik said, "but if you want to come to accommodations with yourself and what happened to you – if you want that to make you stronger – then you're going to have to stop dealing in hypotheticals."

 _Academic at heart; I can't help it_ , Charles thought ruefully. Erik huffed – his version of laughter, Charles decided – and stroked the inside of Charles's wrist where his pulse was still throbbing rapidly.

"Take a deep breath," Erik said quietly. Charles obeyed, in through the nose and out through the mouth three times. "Now, I want to know why you've felt you can't be angry, or that you can't admit to being angry."

 _My therapist, my sister… I can't let them see me like that_ , Charles confessed. "I don't want my professionalism questioned, and I don't want Raven seeing me like – like this dangerous, irrational, _wounded_ thing she needs to take care of. She had enough of that when I'd just gotten out of the hospital.

"And why can't you admit that to yourself?"

"It isn't rational. It doesn't do any good; after all, it isn't as if I can vent my anger on him without consequences." Charles wiggled his fingers and shifted; the mat was thin, and couldn't hide the hardness of the floor for very long. "And in telepaths, anger can be… dangerous. Nurturing it can be devastating, to the telepath and anyone around them."

"So can repressing it; you were no less angry when you told yourself you couldn't possibly by angry than if you had allowed your anger in the first place. There's nothing written that says we have to be _rational_ all the time," Erik pointed out. "Would you tell one of your patients not to be angry if something had been done to them? If he'd gone after one of them instead of you?"

So many of his children – more than he would like to think – came to him with some trauma in their pasts, and so often that trauma lay close to the surface, very close to an incident in which the child first lost control of her abilities. A distant, critical parent who hadn't yet learned to accept the child's mutation; bullies at school and the teachers who ignored the bullies and sometimes added cruelties of their own; the casual anti-mutant remarks she could hear or see anywhere on TV, the internet, or walking down the street.

"I wouldn't." _It would be telling them to deny their experiences, and to say their emotional reactions aren't valid._ And, Charles thought with a sudden, vicious twist of his heart, so many of them had heard that already, from people both hostile and well-meaning.

"Then you should extend yourself the same courtesy." Erik tucked himself back into easy pose again, his forearms resting on his knees so his fingers dangled loosely. "Anger isn't a valid response only for lesser mortals, Charles. It isn't a concession to their weakness that you can't allow yourself because you're better or stronger than they are. You would tell the same thing to any adult who'd been a victim of a crime, whether or not they were a mutant."

"There isn't…" Charles sighed. "There's a difference, though. I _can't_ give way to anger – I can't indulge it. In a telepath, that could be disastrous."

"In anyone it could be disastrous," Erik said impatiently, his fingers tapping swift against the mat by Charles's wrist. Charles had the sudden sense of Erik _reaching_ for the metal in the room, holding onto it as if holding onto control. "And I'm not saying you ought to give into it, but to acknowledge that you want bloody, awful things to be done to a man who hurt you, just like most of us do. And I'm saying you should agree that you have the right to want that. Because you might be able to start healing from there – where you can't deny what you are and what you feel."

And that – that was the crux of it. Charles closed his eyes and looked for the quiet space inside him again. He was just as broken today as the first day he'd woken after the coma – _broken, fragile, like everyone else; you got brought back down to earth hard, Xavier_ – and Emma had tried to tell him that, had seen it with her telepathy and the charts and questionnaires they used to slot mental disorders into their categories. Raven had probably sensed it, clinging to the shreds of her patience and the fear that Charles was still too fragile to be confronted like she wanted to confront him.

"You won't be the same," Erik told him firmly, as if issuing a commandment, "but you'll be stronger. You won't 'move past this' or' have closure' or whatever it was your idiot counselor told you in the hospital. You won't be able to pretend nothing happened. But if you harness the knowledge this experience has given you… you can become greater than you were. And he won't be able to control you anymore."

The passion nearly caught Charles off-guard; he was half-drowned in it, and strangely half-convinced that Erik was talking about _himself_ as much as Charles. For a moment he thought seriously about prying, looking down deep into the well of Erik's memories to see what and who Erik was speaking of, and nearly asked _Who first unlocked your anger?_ but kept that to himself.

It was easier now, to see the anger running underneath Erik's calm, a storm focused by Erik's will. This studio – the work – was the lens that drew that chaos into a fine thread, harnessing it to a purpose that Erik pursued with a ferocity that staggered Charles, seeing it. _Protect save teach show them not to be afraid of the people who should fear them_ laced through Erik's thoughts like a mantra, subtle and mostly unheard but undeniably _there_ all the same, and so close to what Charles felt whenever a new child came to his office he ached.

Tentatively, he reached out and threaded some of his own conviction through Erik, that Erik could know it, too.

"Like I said, peace isn't an option," Erik said, but a curiously gentle expression had settled in his grey eyes. "But balance, maybe, is. You'll find yours again."

Charles nodded and couldn't, for the life of him, think of anything to say. _It's very obvious when you say it like that_ , he settled for saying, and that got another huff and impatient headshake, as if Erik were annoyed with his own amusement. Charles allowed himself a smile, surprised to find how well it fit.

A flicker of something from Erik, then, half-articulated but still deeply felt, for all its spontaneity.

 _Oh_ , Charles thought, and Erik looked away.

"You should go home," Erik said, not unkindly, after a moment. 

He got to his feet and held a hand out to help Charles up. Charles accepted it and stumbled into verticality again, holding onto Erik's hand more tightly, almost, than anything before. His head buzzed with dizziness – nearly an hour had passed, he saw, looking at the clock – and with suddenly being close to Erik, their fingers twined together.

* * *

Admitting his anger had emptied him, as if allowing himself to feel it had allowed it to rush through and out of him like water through a floodgate. Plenty of it was left, Charles sensed, a reservoir waiting to be filled to the brim again, but for now… Now he walked down to Central Park, his telepathy curling absently through the thoughts of the joggers and tourists bustling by, not looking for anything so much as registering the benign hum of preoccupied minds.

He walked along the edges, dipping into the park to find a place to sit. He found one under the shade of a spread-armed oak, still a little damp from yesterday's rain but set apart from the sunbathing teenagers and a clutch of families picnicking. Spreading out his fleece to serve as a makeshift blanket, Charles tucked himself against the rough column of the tree trunk and pulled out his phone.

The search results came up fast, none in Recent News, but plenty in Wikipedia, Mutant Rights Watch, Mutant Equality Now and – Charles skipped over these – Americans for Purity and the Friends of Humanity.

_Stryker guilty in Xavier shooting. Attorneys to appeal._

_After only six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of 'guilty' against William Stryker, 42 of Washington D.C, who stood accused of the attempted murder of Charles Francis Xavier, the well-known psychiatrist and mutant-rights advocate._

_Sentencing is slated for next month, but is expected to be harsh in light of the nature of the attack. The jury found Mr. Stryker guilty of attempted murder in the first degree, which carries with it a minimum prison term of twenty to forty years in New York. Prosecutors were successfully able to argue that the shooting constituted a hate crime under the amended Hate Crimes Act of 2000 of the New York Penal Code, which ensures Mr. Stryker will serve a twenty-year minimum sentence. Legal analysts agree, however, that it will virtually guarantee that Mr. Stryker's sentence will be much closer to the maximum than the minimum._

_"Today's ruling was a victory for mutants everywhere," said lead prosecutor Robert Drake in remarks following adjournment. "William Stryker is a bigot who, when told his son did not have a problem that required diagnosis or 'fixing' took out his rage on the doctor who stood up to him. He traveled from Washington D.C. to New York with the specific intent of killing Dr. Xavier, and the court has done its duty in seeing him punished for his actions."_

_"What we've seen is one of the greatest travesties of justice in the history of American jurisprudence," said Graydon Creed, Mr. Stryker's defense attorney. "From the court's decision to allow secure-circuit testimony from my client's accuser – a direct violation of his right to confront his accuser – to its refusal to address the possibility of telepathic tampering with the jury, I think it's more than possible to say that my client has been railroaded by mutants on a crusade to damage his name and paint themselves as victims in some huge, imaginary conspiracy."_

_Mr. Creed indicated that the defense team would challenge the ruling, and has already begun drafting its appeal. While reluctant to give away too much of his strategy, Mr. Creed indicated that the appeal would hinge largely on constitutional issues._

_This choice is a wise one, according to Tabitha Bergeron of New York University's Institute of Mutant Legal Research. "It allows Mr. Creed to avoid angering potentially pro-mutant or mutant-sympathetic appeals courts," Ms. Bergeron said, "and it also does not ask the courts to engage in the sorts of existential or philosophical debates required when discussing the implications of telepathy. The history of using closed-circuit television to acquire testimony from witnesses who are otherwise unavailable to the court is a vexed one – but vexed in a safer way than reopening the so-called 'mutant question.'"_

_Supporters of both Mr. Xavier and Mr. Stryker were present in full force outside the courtroom, as police in riot and mutant-neutralization gear looked on. Two arrests were made, both from the pro-human side, with members from the Friends of Humanity and the Purifiers taken in for disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer, respectively._

The sentencing had been a separate media circus. Creed had hired some mouthpiece – a preacher who said mutants weren't proof of evolution, only proof that God hated the degeneracy of the American nation – and stirred up the crowd, hoping to provoke the mutants gathered on the other side of the street into a confrontation.

_Over fifteen people were arrested following Mr. Stryker's sentencing. Despite a lengthy presentation of character witnesses and psychological experts by Mr. Creed for the defense, Mr. Stryker was sentenced to forty years. Members of the press in the court room at the time posted the sentence as Judge Taylor read it, and reaction was almost instantaneous._

_"40yrs and I hope he dies in prison" Tweeted MutantNProud, while FoHFollower posted "Yeah muties are so f*****g persecuted when they have Traitor Taylor in their pockets" to his account._

_In the streets, however, the situation was considerably more volatile. Three members of the Brotherhood of Mutants were arrested for menacing two pro-human protesters, while two more were arrested for resisting arrest on unspecified charges._

The SPLC had a PDF of the sentencing. Charles pulled it up, and remembered reading the sentence for the first time, trying to find comfort in the dispassionate precision of the language. Taylor had allowed himself little room for emotion; all that space had been taken up by Charles's supporters and detractors alike.

 _Not mine_ , he told himself. He'd been a symbol, just as much as Stryker, something silent and voiceless. Only Raven had stayed by him, and Moira. Ororo, in New York and prudently insisting that Charles stay out of contact until she spoke to him, had been one point of light in the chaos of the city.

No one had interviewed him for any of the post-trial stories. He hadn't given any interviews or said anything except through Ororo, who had given a statement and a press release. _Dr. Xavier is happy to know that justice has been done, and asks that the public give him space as he continues to recover from his injuries. He also asks that everyone, mutant and human alike, remember that we have it within us to co-exist peacefully, without fear or rancor._

Dr. Xavier most emphatically _hadn't_ been happy. He'd expected relief when he'd picked up the phone and heard Ororo's voice on the other end telling him the news.

At first he had allowed himself surprise, because he honestly hadn't expected the jury to accept the addition of the hate crime element. _Mutaphobia_ (ridiculous word; he snorted, thinking about it) was real enough, and probably had been present in some percentage of the jury pool; it was hard, convicting someone for having motivations that you shared. Surprise, first, and then hearing Ororo saying "He'll be in an undisclosed location while awaiting sentencing. Taylor will probably opt for the maximum" and not really hearing it.

And then… nothing. _It's over_ part of him had said, but another part – the part that stirred and chafed at its restraints and imagined Stryker having the rest of his life to stew in his hatred – said _no it's not, and you know it's not_.

"It'll never be over." Erik had as good as said that. Charles shifted and reached behind himself, up under his t-shirt, to touch the scar on his back, a toughened ridge of skin and tissue lying nestled against his spine. In the past – ever since he'd had the flexibility to twist around like this, so a handful of months – the area had felt tender, the skin transitioning from its normal sensitivity to a dull, nervous ache that tightened itself into a knot around where the bullet had struck. The _bone_ hurt, and the spaces between the bone, and sometimes Charles had imagined he could feel the ghost-pressure of the swelling that had nearly paralyzed him.

Now it felt… it was there, undeniably different, a bit sore from lying flat on his back so long, but like the anger, it had become a part of him, not some strange appendage grafted on.

Charles settled back, shifting a little – _don't sit on your damn tailbone, Charles_ said Erik's voice in his head – and watched the day pass, and started to become reacquainted with himself.


	12. Very easily done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mid-morning finds them in a pub.
> 
> Erik dimly recognizes it from last night, although he has no memory of whether he went in for a drink or merely wandered past it on his way to finding Charles. Unlike last night, it's far less than half-full – although his own power doesn't run toward telepathy, Erik senses the lethargy in the town, the absolute unwillingness to get out of bed – and other than themselves, two people who may well have just slept here, and the kitchen staff, he, Charles, and Raven have the place to themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my initial request for prompts (which is still open, if you'd like to leave one!), professor asked for a timestamp from [Trying to create the next world war](http://archiveofourown.org/works/475360). For clarity, you should read that first before attempting this. But it's really short!
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Raven  
> Warnings: Holocaust references  
> Advertisements: Sexy sexy sex, Charles being an arrogant bastard and Erik enjoying it despite himself

**Very easily done**

Mid-morning finds them in a pub.

Erik dimly recognizes it from last night, although he has no memory of whether he went in for a drink or merely wandered past it on his way to finding Charles. Unlike last night, it's far less than half-full – although his own power doesn't run toward telepathy, Erik senses the lethargy in the town, the absolute unwillingness to get out of bed – and other than themselves, two people who may well have just slept here, and the kitchen staff, he, Charles, and Raven have the place to themselves.

It smells like sweat and smoke and centuries of alcohol marinating together, and the more he tries not to notice it, the more he does. Erik tries not to breathe too deeply and tries to concentrate on his food.

Breakfast is stereotypically English and heavy on the grease: eggs and sausages (Charles scoops them onto a piece of toast before stuffing them in his mouth, licking away the grease after he swallows), a black pudding that's more runny than not, beans, and a fried tomato sat on the side like an afterthought. Erik, for the sake of his stomach, carefully ignores the pudding and tomato and concentrates on the eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. Charles is already working on his second pot of tea, the battered pewter kettle still steaming away next to him.

_I can't believe I'm sitting here, eating breakfast_ , Erik thinks with a ruefulness he isn't entirely sure is private. Not an hour ago Charles had pushed him up against the door and sucked him off like their hangovers didn't exist, his tongue softly plush and clever on the underside of Erik's cock, his lips curved attractively around its width. He'd moaned like – god, Erik didn't even know, like a whore, like the best dream, like heaven – as he'd stroked himself off, and Erik had come deep down Charles's throat, shaking like the world had gone out from underneath him.

Across the table, Charles turns a bit pink. _If you don't mind, not at the breakfast table? And certainly not in front of my sister._

_Oh, it blushes_ , Erik thinks at him, grins to watch Charles go even more red.

Next to Charles, Raven is glancing suspiciously between them – and possibly having a silent conversation of her own with her putative brother. 

"Well, it's not like _you_ didn't have a good night last night, is it?" Charles manages a creditable glare, perhaps only because his eyes are a bit red at the rims, clashing with the vivid blue of his pupils.

"Perfectly lovely," Raven says, sourly and fakely British. Despite the parody, Erik hears the precise copy of Charles's intonation.

Raven is blue, and that had been the second revelation in the space of two hours: Charles a telepath and Raven a shapeshifter. She'd changed into a flawless facsimile of him, down to the ding on his cufflink and the faded remnants of the scar on his upper lip. In her natural form, she's the most lovely oceanic blue, with red hair and eyes gold as the – no, not like the gold he's taken back from the Nazis – gold as pure gold, then. Charles in his natural form is arrogant and shameless about weaving himself in and out of Erik's thoughts, or pulling secrets from the handful of students and professors staggering to classes. Magnificent, both of them.

It's getting harder and harder to think of why he shouldn't dump the CIA now. Charles could find Schmidt and the other mutants with them all on his own, without the endless vagaries of bureaucracy and the teamwork MacTaggert and McCone insist on. Erik wonders if maybe Charles could kill Schmidt with nothing more than the will to see Schmidt's heart stop. If not, Raven could easily…

_Not so fast, my friend_ , Charles says, so endlessly serene Erik wants to find out exactly what he can do to take that serenity from him. Anger, passion – _anything_ , Erik really doesn't care.

"Erik needs our help." Charles says this to Raven through a mouthful of toast, eggs, and baked beans. Raven's now-blond eyebrow rises. "Not _that_ kind of help – I took care of that quite adequately last night, thank you – but with… Erik, why don't you tell her?"

Erik does. Speaking along with the hangover food seems to help. He skates briefly over his vendetta against Schmidt (time enough for that later, he decides) and concentrates on the specifics of the case, the few details Moira had been able to provide. Raven's expression changes from one of polite interest to incredulity, a flare of hope that even Erik can't miss.

"Charles!" she says, turning to her brother. "There's – do you really think…?"

"Can you trust Agent MacTaggert?" Charles asks.

"She's not the kind of person to invent wild stories or exaggerate; she's extremely practical." Erik says this with enough grudgingness to indicate that this is high, and rare, praise. It is; most of the agents are intolerable, too far up their own asses – or McCone's ass, for that matter – to be worth bothering with. "I'll take her word for it; she had no reason to be deceptive. Unless she was under the influence of something," some kind of mind-altering drug that existed only in HUAC's paranoid imaginings, maybe, Erik thought with a snort, "she reported the reality as it stands."

"That's always the tricky part about reality: it stands in so many places," Charles muses. "Still, it's worth reading her at least, so I can get a better idea of what we're going to be dealing with."

Erik can't stop the surge of hope at Charles's words. It's not something he's accustomed to feeling.

"It figures we'd be looking all over the place for more people like us and the rest of them turn out to be a bunch of psychos," Raven grumbles, pushing at her cooling eggs. Her fork pauses in its slow, scratching path across her plate. "And I really hope you're not planning on leaving me behind and kiting off together."

"I'd never dream of it," Charles says, placing a hand on her arm. The siblings – _not blood siblings, rather by choice and circumstance_ , Charles says – have another silent exchange that leaves Erik fretful and irritated at being excluded. "If we're going to find other people who are like us, we ought to be together, don't you think?"

"Sure, say it like it was your idea," Raven grumbles, but it sounds good-natured.

"I'd like to know," Erik begins, pausing to push sausage onto the last bit of toast, "why you're so interested in working with the CIA."

"Oh, for many reasons." Charles gestures expansively with his teacup. "Raven and I do have… resources," and Erik's definitely got plans for those; might as well put them to use instead of gathering dust in a bank vault, "but they aren't the kind that could get us, say, a fully-armed tactical strike team, if we needed it. By your own account and Moira's, Dr. Schmidt has significant… capabilities that the three of us might not be able to counteract."

"Also he wants to show off," Raven says dryly.

Erik throttles back his annoyance; it's not easily done, and he's not accustomed to giving way to spoiled brats. It burns hot, threatening to transmute to anger. "Xavier, I was under the impression that you _know_ what this means to me. I'll not have you jeopardizing it – "

"I would not do such a thing," Charles says, and the soothing tone only pricks Erik's fury even more. The metalware on the table begins to rattle, Raven's knife and fork clattering against her plate, and the teapot lifts up, its spout crumpling. "And I won't have you jeopardizing yourself, or me, _or_ Raven, Erik!"

He has to make himself let go, feeling deeply ridiculous. Fucking _silverware_. The adrenaline doesn't care, and keeps jangling in his head – until, until a calm tendril of thought, like a slow-moving stream or the heavy sunlight of high summer works its way through him, stirring up vague memories like sand from that riverbed.

_I know you don't appreciate this, I know you would prefer I stay out, but it's either that or risking you bringing the wrath of the proprietor down on our heads. Unless you think you can fix this?_ Charles indicates his spoon, whose bowl is now melted. _Thank you._

"So what's the deal?" Raven asks. "Are we going to the CIA or… or whatever?"

"The CIA for now," Charles says, and Erik resolves that they're going to have words on that, telepath or no. "And after that, we'll see."

* * *

The words wait until Charles pays for breakfast and hustles them down the still-empty cobblestone streets to a flat sandwiched between a Gothic church and an ancient guildhall. It's his and Raven's flat, he explains briefly, and darts in to leave a note for the caretaker that they will be gone for some time.

"You get used to it," Raven tells Erik while Charles is gone. There's something in her tone that says _getting used to it_ has more to do with resignation than anything.

"Does he normally make you walk around like this?" he asks, tilting his chin to indicate her current form, inoffensively blonde and blue-eyed, pretty in a way that he's fairly certain wouldn't stand out to him if he didn't know what she was.

"You get used to that, too," Raven mutters. The resignation is more like resentment now.

Charles comes out like a whirlwind clad in tweed and wool. "Raven, I was thinking, you have to give notice at your restaurant and pack. I need to wake our banker, I suppose, and arrange for funds. Why don't you do t while Erik and I collect his things? We can meet back here."

"Sure." Raven's not even bothering to hide her skepticism or her smirk – or bothering to double-check the street before flowing into a perfect copy of her brother.

Charles stiffens but doesn't say anything. Erik watches, nearly dazed with admiration, as Raven flickers back into her blonde mask again. Looking more closely he can see the split-second of change when she's between forms, the remarkable blue of her skin and the iridescent scales shifting and changing.

"Get over it, Charles," Raven snaps in reply to a silent rebuke from Charles. "Give me an hour?"

"Of course, darling. Should I?" He gestures to his temple, doesn't look terribly surprised when she shakes her head. "An hour then."

"What was that all about?" Erik asks. The words, he figures, will have to wait a little longer.

"Oh, a compromise of sorts," Charles says with utterly transparent lightness. "It's too risky for her to walk about in her true form, so she keeps to that shape, and in return I don't read her mind."

"They say compromises only ensure nobody wins." Erik can't decide whether to feel angry or disappointed. The disappointment in Charles, the first person of his own kind he's ever met, is keener because of that.

"It was either that or have my stepfather experimenting on her," Charles snaps. "I don't think I need to tell you why I might object to that. I had a hard enough time staying out of his reach as it was."

Before Erik can say anything, Charles gives him a ferocious torrent of images: a little blueskin girl with red hair hiding behind the light summer drapes in the upper gallery, _RavenRavenRaven please change please I can't stop him_ and heavy footsteps drawing closer, a looming shadow resolving into features that have all softness and pity leached out of them, dark eyes snapping downward to see – a little blonde girl, her hair done in perfect Shirley Temple ringlets, clutching her teddy bear.

"Why do you do this, then," Erik thinks deliberately of _Oxford_ , filled to the brim with utterly pedestrian humanity, "when you could be so much more?"

"What I want to be is a geneticist," Charles tells him. He pauses at a streetcorner, as if to get his bearings, then makes an abrupt right. Erik recognizes the intersection, the opposite end of the street from his hotel. "I've no interest in your _Herr Doktor_ 's goals, Erik. Given that, as far as we know, there are only six or seven of us in the world, that would be singularly foolish."

"Do you think Schmidt is one?" Erik thinks back over Moira's dossier, which had mentioned only Schmidt's – Shaw's, really, Sebastian Shaw – overwhelming arrogance. There had been the man who could make whirlwinds, and the demon-faced teleporter, the diamond woman… and Schmidt remained an infuriating blank.

"He could be." Charles shrugs. "It would certainly make controlling those other three mutants easier, if he had some parity with them. But be that as it may, I hardly think they're going to be interested in allying with us – or you with them, I'd wager."

"Don't take sucker bets."

"But," Charles continues brightly, speaking more rapidly now that they're drawing close to the hotel (Erik can sense it, the unique, if dull and cheap, resonance of the bedframe in his room), "that _does_ suggest that there are others – many others – out there like us. Unless Schmidt has a specific method for tracking mutants down, he must have happened across them purely by chance." He thinks a delicate question at Erik; once Erik understands it, he also understands the delicacy.

"It was an accident," he growls. He focuses on the coin in his pocket, pouring his fury into it so it saturates every atom of nickel and iron. "I heard later he had been the doctor at the camp for three months before I arrived. He already had a reputation among the other… the others. They called him _Totenschädel_ , the dead man's head… His eyes." He forces his way through the memory, bringing it up with all its sharp edges, half-hoping to cut Charles if he's so desperate to _understand_. "He was gaunt all over. His eyes shone… I remember how they looked in the light he wore on his head. They said it was better to die than to become sick."

_We'll find him_ , Charles thinks, the words laced through with determination that's bracing as steel. It's not _We'll find him and kill him_ , which is what Erik plans – what he tells himself he _will_ convince Charles to do, one way or another – but it's a beginning. It's a _we_ , and not _we and the CIA_ , which Erik will take as progress.

Fittingly, they make progress up the stairs to Erik's room and Erik packs quickly. Not that there's much to pack. As he reassembles his shaving kit and the disaster of last night's clothes, Charles busies himself flipping through Moira's dossier.

"She's very thorough, isn't she?" he asks, flipping back the first page of his own file. "I say, she even has my general practitioner listed. Solicitor, hardly surprising… I wonder if she has my allergies."

"I imagine she'd have to be," Erik says as he folds yesterday's jacket carefully. He's never given Moira much thought, but she would have had to build her reputation on scrupulousness and uncompromising attention to detail. The men – stupid, arrogant, narrow-minded like all humans – wouldn't have allowed her to get very far without nearly superhuman proofs of her competence. Maybe that was Moira's special ability. "They had a hard enough time with my being a Jew, for all their carping on the importance of the alliance between the Americans and Israelis."

"I can't imagine why they had a hard time getting along with you." Charles is dry as a desert. Erik snorts.

With his back turned, Erik doesn't see him, but hears and feels the springs changing their alignment, compressing in some places and loosening in others. He turns, yesterday's shirt in hand – and nearly drops the shirt when he sees Charles has stretched himself out on the still-rumpled blankets, propped up on the pillow so he can grin at Erik. He's taken off his jacket and disgracefully octogenarian cardigan and is in shirtsleeves that expose the strong bones of his forearms, the collar open to reveal the bruises and marks Erik had left there last night.

At the time, when they'd been dressing, it had been a source of distant annoyance to Erik, watching the blush-red and purple blotches be folded up under respectability, but he'd been too overcome by the discovery of _another like him_ to care much – too carried out of himself with Charles's own excitement. Now, though, all he can do is look and follow the traces of bite marks and scratches down to where the collar finally buttons again.

_I did tell my sister an hour_ , Charles says. He cranes his head to look at the clock on the table, exposing the long, sleek column of his throat. Erik's own throat goes dry. _We've been at this for… twenty-five minutes now, the nearest I can figure. If we hurry…_

Charles, Erik decides, is infuriating. He's contrary and too stubborn by far and arrogant enough for any ten – no, twenty – humans. He's _like Erik_ , and that makes Charles laugh and think something about how he's not sure that's a compliment, a remark he softens with a thread of knowing what Erik meant. He's _beautiful_ , flushed and absolutely brilliant, smiling at Erik because he knows he's won, with Erik telegraphing _god yes please anything forever_ with the fading bits of coherence left to him.

_I wish we'd met much earlier than this_. The thought is unexpectedly wistful, and not very Charles-like. Charles absently brushes a strand of hair back from Erik's forehead. The words and the gesture take Erik off-guard, and for a moment he allows himself to wish for that too.

It's only a moment because Charles is kissing him, sudden and fierce, tongue licking peremptorily at Erik's lips before pushing in. Erik lets him and makes it clear he's _permitting_ this, which makes Charles draw back and laugh, fine, amused lines forming in the corners of his eyes, before returning to kiss him again.

The room is working its way toward being too warm, with the south-facing windows letting the sunlight flood in and the summer already heavy in the air. Erik keeps one finger of his power on the clock, counting its way down to when they'll have to leave and go collect Raven, uses the others to unbuckle his belt and unbutton Charles's trousers and his own as well.

_You are – Erik, you are brilliant_ , Charles thinks, and Erik smirks at the compliment, thinks _I should think unfastening buttons and belt buckles would be parlor tricks._

Charles hums and breaks away to apply his teeth to Erik's neck. _You're capable of so much_ , he thinks, nipping sharply at where he's managed to get at Erik's collar bones and the tender space between them. Erik shivers, for the dangerous caress of Charles's teeth and the words. _What I can sense in you…_

He leaves the thought there, tantalizing as his mouth, and begins to work at Erik's buttons. Erik's heart knocks hard against his chest, like it's trying to beat its way out of his body. All of him is trembling, over-full of things he's rarely allowed himself to feel – desire, anger, a deep aching want that sits heavy deep in his gut, _hope_ , which is worst of all – and he's not entirely sure if he'll be able to hold himself together or fly apart from the pressure.

_Hopefully before twenty minutes are up_ , Charles says playfully, pushing Erik's shirt off his shoulders. Erik helps him, shrugging the fabric off and fumbling it down his arms so he can drop it on the floor. Clever, competent fingers stroke down his neck, follow his collar bones out to the prominence of bone and muscle where his shoulders meet his arms, down his biceps and, although it's awkward, the sensitive skin on the inside of Erik's forearms.

Charles is careful of the tattoo. Erik had been wondering if he'd noticed it.

_I'm not something for you to fix_ , he thinks, meaning it to be a warning.

"Would never dream of it, darling," Charles says, flippant enough to make the statement suspect, but then they're kissing again, Charles's tongue twining wet and sleek with his own, and Erik lets it go.

They push slowly against each other, not quite rubbing off. Erik feels close already, his cock pressing against the soft fabric of his boxers and where his undone zipper has given way.

"You truly have the most amazing cock." Charles gazes up at him, heavy-lidded, his blue eyes hazed over like stained glass on a humid day. "Feeling you in me… I can still feel you, you know. Devil of a time trying to walk properly after being fucked like that."

"You asked for it," Erik points out. He grinds himself hard against Charles for the pleasure of watching Charles's pretty eyes roll back in his head. _You asked for my cock and I gave it to you, didn't I?_

"You've ruined me for everyone else," Charles affirms with a curious solemnity before arching his spine – Erik gets a hand under his shirt to feel the strong, supple flesh as it flexes – and pushing _back_ against Erik. "Sadly, we won't have time for that _now_ , but I think we can still get something accomplished."

He's already accomplishing _something_ , pushing aside Erik's trousers and the placket of his boxers and pulling Erik's cock out. Erik's already well on his way to being on the aching, desperate side of hard, and watching Charles lick his lips – _remembering the sight of Charles on his knees, mouth stretched around the thickness of his cock, his hands on Erik's hips but letting Erik fuck into his mouth anyway_ – makes him shiver and thrust into Charles's slick palm, chasing after something like that sensation again.

"I didn't realize how nice I looked," Charles says in a tone that suggests the exact opposite. Erik snarls and catches at Charles's lower lip, nipping at it until it's swollen and sore with blood rushing up to the surface. Charles yelps and twists deliciously, not really seeming to mind the pain all that much, if the way he licks back into Erik's mouth is any indication.

His hand on Erik's cock is devastatingly good, Charles shameless about flicking through Erik's lower brain functions to see what he likes and how best to pull the pleasure out of him. A thumb rubs across the slick head, nail scraping close to the tip and encouraging drops of precome Charles uses to ease the rest of the way. There's something devilish in the twist of his fingers down Erik's length that has Erik's hips stuttering and his breath catching in the same awkward rhythm, and Erik's arms are shaking with holding his weight suspended over Charles, holding up his own body and the need to get in closer.

_Come on then_ , Charles thinks, and twists the two of them together. 

It's more awkward for Charles, having to work his hands between them, but it means Erik can clutch him close and grind viciously against Charles's pelvis when Charles hooks a knee around him to lock the two of them in place. His thoughts are nothing logical, only a torrent of sensation and memory, fantasies from being a perpetually horny teenager, encounters with girls and boys alike (and the jealousy that wells up is thick in Erik's throat, but it makes everything sweeter when he pins Charles down hard and thinks _never again no one else for you mine_ and Charles moans broken and heartfelt), and last night clearest of all with lust burning him up inside and this utterly magnificent stranger who's bright at the edges and magnetic (a laugh now, at that) and filled with promise dragging Charles back to his hotel so they can fuck.

He has his fingers twisted in Charles's hair and Charles's are laced around both their cocks, pressing them together so Erik can rut against the lovely friction of Charles's knuckles and the slick length of his dick. _So good so perfect_ , Charles thinks at him frantically, his breathing coming high and sharp in Erik's ear, where he's hidden his face like this is overwhelming him. _Come on, Erik, come for me._

Coming is like hitting a wall, something white-hot that he breaks and melts against. Coming back to himself is like reforming, his neurons stitching themselves back together and leaving him sweaty, sticky inside his clothes, and shaking.

That Charles is similarly undone lights a fierce, happy fire in his chest, bright against the softer glow of orgasm. Charles stares at him with blue eyes glazed over by pleasure, his lovely mouth set in a smile that looks more vulnerable than it's used to being. If they didn't have _everything_ waiting for them, Erik thinks, he could stay here forever.

"We need to go find Schmidt," he says, vaguely amazed that he can actually speak. He leans up on his elbow and reaches over Charles – pressing more closely than strictly necessary, maybe – to collect his shirt.

"Washington first," Charles murmurs, turning the words into glancing kisses against Erik's lips before Erik can sit up and move away. _I do need to read Moira and gather some other information before figuring out our next steps. But I promise you… they'll be our steps, Erik. Together._


	13. A yoga fic [4]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In bed, not thinking of Erik became… increasingly difficult. Charles pushed the duvet down to the foot of the bed and settled back with just the sheet and stared at his ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moar yoga fic! I don't quite know how long this is going to be yet. At the moment I have three more chapters in my head, but knowing how these things go, it will be like a billion in the end.
> 
> As is the case for the rest of the yoga fic, please read the warnings.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Emma, Raven, Steve Rogers  
>  Warnings: PTSD, violence (referenced and described), emotional/physical trauma and recovery  
> Advertisements: solo (attempted) sexytiems

**Chapter four**

Part of _reacquaintance_ involved thinking about that moment with Erik earlier. Charles managed to put it off until bedtime, and after a conversation with Raven that had started badly – he'd stood her and Irene up at the coffee place, too wrapped up in his thoughts and the pleasant day to keep track of time – but had ended with a hug and Raven grudgingly admitting that he looked somewhat better.

He still owed her a proper talk, Charles reminded himself as he brushed his teeth. The longer he put it off, the more harm would be done, but at least she'd been genuinely relieved to see some evidence of a good day in him – shoulders relaxed, an actual appetite at dinner, the absence of lines around his eyes; all physical signs that Raven picked up on with unnerving acuity – and, Charles figured, examining himself closely in the mirror, that won him a little time at least.

His reflection looked back, not quite seeming to belong to him in the way that most reflections did. It was disheveled and a little bit sunburned on cheeks and nose from spending so long outside without sunscreen, in an old t-shirt and boxers. Everything else was pale and slender, the muscles slow to come back after months of severely limited mobility. Steve had given him an extended plan for home therapy and exercise, but so far, Charles's reflection looked the way it had when he'd been in his first year of graduate work and so overcome with knowledge that he'd forgotten to exercise beyond carrying library books around.

 _Still not bad_ , he told himself, leaning against the counter so he could peer into his reflection's eyes. They looked back, wide and blue, the pupils contracted in the bright bathroom light bouncing off pale tiles. _Not on Erik's level, maybe, but six months ago you were still reluctant to get out of your wheelchair._ He shuddered, thinking of it, and his reflection shuddered too.

 _You weren't weak. You'd never call any other survivor of a violent crime weak. Or any student who'd hurt themselves because of their power_. Charles watched the knowledge settle into his reflection's eyes; it took a few reminders, every so often, and often failed to stick for very long. He looked for the deep-hidden voice that said _you were you were you can keep telling yourself you weren't weak but we all know the truth_ , wondering if his pep talk had woken up, but his reflection gazed back at him serenely, one hand brushing absently across its chin as Charles thought that he should really shave tomorrow morning.

In bed, not thinking of Erik became… increasingly difficult. Charles pushed the duvet down to the foot of the bed and settled back with just the sheet and stared at his ceiling.

Erik was, objectively speaking, attractive. Charles had had to refrain from dwelling too much on the flickers of lust and appreciation from the other students in the class, and his own reactions to Erik – to his voice, the proximity of his body, his hands guiding Charles through the poses – hadn't been much different than theirs. Anyone like Charles whose tastes ran toward a harsh-lined face, fine-drawn mouth, even more finely-drawn muscles and broad shoulders that narrowed down into a sleek waist and hips would, Charles told himself around a swallow, find Erik alluring. So that interest was only natural, and could be dealt with.

 _Psychologically_ speaking… Of course he knew what transference and infatuation were, and that had to explain what simple physical attraction didn't cover. _The manifestation of repressed emotion as love, often erotic but at times platonic, directed at the therapist rather than the object of repressed emotion._ Charles had never gone in for classical psychoanalysis, but the principle haunted every therapist; he'd had his own patients who had developed crushes on him (not aided by the fact that he'd always looked ridiculously young for his age; he'd looked barely older than seventeen during his internship), and as he'd aged those crushes were sometimes traded for the patient's need for a best friend.

With Erik it was the same, Charles told himself firmly. His prior professional relationship with Emma had precluded the development of that sort of attachment, but Erik had been his therapist, his confessor, the only person who had touched Charles intimately and fearlessly for months and had not expected anything except that Charles's body would obey him. He'd listened to Charles pouring out nearly a year of poison and after the flood had died down had simply nodded and said _I understand completely_.

Still… _there had been something_ from Erik's end, that brief moment when Erik had _felt_ so keenly that Charles had been unable to guard against it. There'd been affection, concern, interest, anger (for Charles), determination (that Charles would be okay), and _yearning_ , which had tied itself like a knot around Charles's heart and, now in the dark, Charles found he couldn't untie it.

 _Countertransference_. Charles stretched his arms and legs, spine arcing off the mattress momentarily before he settled back down, muscles and tendons and nerves all aching deliciously. His own emotional entanglements with his patients tended to the paternal, he supposed, a tendency to nurture and care for ( _worry obsessively over_ , Emma called it) that went beyond the bounds of the therapeutic relationship. Still, it was only natural that Erik – despite not being a therapist as such – would develop some sort of emotional connection to a student.

 _That's a lie and you know it_. He'd read enough of Erik to know that the burning determination to see other mutants safe and grounded in their abilities was balanced against a careful distance. Whatever lay in Erik's past – Charles had managed to keep himself from looking – had set up that distance and placed obstacles along it. That flash of _affectionwantanger-for-youresolution_ Charles had caught had been like a sports car blowing through those roadblocks, a burst of feeling that Erik hadn't been able to help any more than he could help the conviction that drove him.

Charles sighed and tipped his head backward, the back of his skull pressing into his pillow. _Great, so you're finally attracted to someone and it's completely inappropriate. And cliché. Falling in love with your yoga instructor, Xavier? Really?_

 _Really_ , he told the pale face of his ceiling bleakly.

 _At least you're feeling something_. That should count as a minor victory, he reckoned. For obvious reasons he'd put his romantic life on hold while he was in recovery, but even at the end of his regular therapy sessions with Steve, when he was home and functioning more or less independently, he hadn't experienced even the barest flicker of interest in another person.

Everyone had become _mind_ , his telepathy too desperate in scanning the world for threats, the hostility that most people kept tightly locked behind politeness and deference to social rules that said killing people was wrong. Bodies had rarely registered; his own had only because of its painful inconvenience. So, not even being able to look at another person and dredge up even a scrap of interest had meant no dating, no sex. Charles couldn't think of the last time he'd tried to masturbate without wincing in private embarrassment.

Absently, he pushed the fleece blanket further down his chest, restless with the weight on top of him and his body still warm from the day. With a glance at the door as if expecting Raven to burst in unannounced, he sat up and wriggled out of his shirt, the air sudden and slightly cooler on bare skin. Charles settled back into the warm hollow of his mattress, hands resting uncertainly atop his chest, and stared at the ceiling some more.

 _It would be the height of inappropriateness to wank to images of the man who is your de facto therapist_, Charles told himself sternly. He scratched the edge of his thumbnail against his chest, running against the grain of the sparse hair there. It felt good, enough to provoke a quiet shiver of interest and to make his breath catch in his throat.

 _Put it away_. He took his hands off his chest and placed them stiffly by his side, _atop_ the covers, and thought of the first time he'd ever been in bed with a girl, almost too terrified to keep up the mask of smooth, effortless confidence; afterward, they'd lain together exactly like that, hands demurely above the covers, barely even touching.

 _Erik deserves better than for you to think of him like this_. And for all he knew Erik had someone, a boyfriend, girlfriend, a not-Charles waiting for him at home, and anyway, Charles expecting a romantic relationship when his problems clearly needed a therapist and not a boyfriend would do Erik no favors anyway.

Reality and embarrassment seemed to do the trick. Reluctantly, Charles's body let go of its desire and subsided, and Charles drew the blankets up once more and fell asleep.

* * *

Once woken, however, Charles's body was not going allow him to put it back into dormancy.

"I would be much happier about you in some other context," Charles said to the shower caddy. Or, rather, to his cock, which was half-erect and had been since he'd pushed himself out of bed. His dreams – lucid (as usual) and perfectly remembered (as usual) – had, for once, not featured some iteration of Stryker or another faceless villain tracking him down on the street or in his home or his office, nor had they been the usual alternative, a flat grayness that he wandered through until he woke up. This time they had been warm, warm enough that when Charles had woken up he'd pushed all his blankets to the foot of the bed again, and someone (unseen, but Charles knew who his unconscious meant it to be, goddammit) pressed close to him, not doing anything, but that presence had been more than enough to arouse.

It felt strange, Charles reflected as he stared at the shower wall through the water sluicing down his head. He'd half-expected, after having been unacquainted with lust for so long, it would hurt or burn, like stepping outside into the sun after a month of darkness. But this was a slow, tentative thing, his body reaching for something it barely remembered but wanted anyway, the tension just starting to spool between his hips and low in his back.

And it wasn't going to stop wanting. Charles reached for the body wash with a huff.

There wasn't anything for it, and Charles told himself, as he rinsed the gel off and took himself in hand, _this doesn't have to mean anything at all_.

The pressure around his cock was shiveringly perfect. Charles shut his eyes and bowed his head, hunching around the ache building in him. Water thundered all around him, the pressure of it loud and fierce but nowhere near enough to drown out the low, slow-growling thunder in his blood, and he experimentally rocked his hips into his hand as he slid his fingers down his length, and _oh god_. Even the thought was choky.

A few half-formed thoughts came to him, what Erik might look like in the shower mostly, how it would feel if he molded his chest and stomach to Charles's back and reached around him, his fingers and Charles's twining together and his cock pressing hot and stiff into the curve of Charles's ass.

It would feel good, Charles decided as he thrust hesitantly, still not hard all the way and already a bit painful-sensitive. Erik would tuck his chin over Charles's shoulder – their respective heights should allow for it – and look down at Charles fucking into their hands and whisper _things_ in that remarkable voice of his, his breath hot against the damp curve of Charles's ear.

 _He's not even your friend, not really_. The warning didn't help; his libido had the bit in its mouth. _He's just someone helping you, common cause and all that_ , and like last night Charles knew it still wasn't true. _No matter how many times you think it won't make it real. There's something there, let yourself have this_ , and _this_ was stroking his own chest, imagining Erik's graceful fingers were doing the tracing instead.

Charles kept thrusting and stroking, clumsy and wincing with the overstimulation and not quite able to keep the pleasantness of the fantasy. At last Erik's hand playing across his body dissolved back into his own and the ache in his cock had transmuted from pleasurable to distinctly uncomfortable, and god _damn_ it he was still hard and the edge was _right there_ , if he could only just – but no.

He managed to brace himself against the wall before collapsing in frustration, breathing hard. The tiles were slippery and cool under his forearm, fogging a little with his breath. _You got this far_ , he breathed into the tile. _It's a start, it's better than a year of nothing_.

"Fuck," he said aloud, and turned the water over to cold.

* * *

Over breakfast with Raven he told himself at least it was _progress_ , something to enter into the diary of things he was doing to try to process his trauma. It was also something he'd keep under lock and key, at least when it came to Erik. Emma could rant at him about transparency and not hiding anything during their appointments, but Emma knew Erik somehow and she did _not_ need to know that Charles was having highly inappropriate thoughts about someone she'd thought could help him.

Knowing Emma, it would earn him a lecture on appropriate boundaries and a lifetime of embarrassing innuendo.

The next step would be to find a suitable replacement for transference-based attraction, Charles decided. He sipped his tea and pretended to read the _Times_ , flipping through the various disasters in Syria, the presidential race, yet more news on 'The Mutant Question,' which was now – of course – being asked again now that the country's leadership was changing over. Maybe Dr. Neramani, who'd been… well, rather too much like Charles for comfort, but was also tall and striking and played a mean game of chess. Or perhaps Dr. Haller from the practice two doors over, with the lean body of a marathoner and a uniquely passionate mind.

He'd see both of them today at some point. Gabrielle had a standing ten a.m. caffeine infusion at the coffee shop across the street, and Lilandra worked in the same building as he did. Both of them were good friends and colleagues, if on the outside of his troubles, and both were practical enough and unsentimental enough to not fuss over his injury and let pity creep into the equation.

 _You'd be using them_. He responded absently to a question from Raven about his plans for the day, "Office to take care of some paperwork, and then after that I'm not sure. Did you have plans?" _And they're your friends, and you'd still be lying to yourself_.

"… go hunting for bandersnatches in the burberry trees, honestly, are you even paying attention?"

Across the table, Raven was blue and indignant, arms crossed over her chest, her breakfast half-finished and clearly forgotten. Charles barely had time to register that and re-process the conversation before she was up and out, slamming her dishes together.

"Raven?" he started.

"Don't." Raven stalked into the kitchen, a crash heralding the arrival of the dishes in the sink. The anger and frustration and _helplessness_ pouring off her nearly swamped him. Carefully he set his teacup down, the clink of china meeting china overloud in the sudden, perilous silence.

Raven reappeared a few minutes later, paused in the doorway to swipe impatiently at her cheeks. The anger had partially transmuted to sorrow, spiced with _why won't he talk to me what's going on with him_ and Raven's typical impatience and discomfort with this sort of emotional overload. She'd always been passionate and felt deeply, but when it came to _sharing_ emotion… that was not Raven's forte.

"Darling," he said, testing out the endearment, pushing away from the table. "I'm sorry."

Raven snorted, pressing a palm to one eye to blot the tears, and mumbled something Charles didn't catch. He heard it, though, thought loud enough that he could tell she'd meant him to overhear.

_You keep saying that._

"I think," Charles said, "we need to talk. Can we sit together?"

They curled up together in the living room, Raven tucked against the arm of the sofa, shielded behind the bare blue knees she'd drawn up to her chest. Charles sat close but not close enough to touch, and, still unsure of his welcome, kept his mind to himself. A tendril of gratefulness from Raven, clear through the fuzziness of her upset and his own, steadied him a little.

"Can you – I need you to tell me," he said slowly, "what's wrong."

"It's stupid," Raven said, with the stubborn tilt to her chin that said he wasn't going to get any more out of her until she was ready.

Charles bit down on the impulse to say something therapeutic, like _no feelings are stupid; they are what they are_ , and listened instead. He had the sense of words building up in Raven's mind, the pressure climbing and climbing until she had to release it. For opinionated Raven, it never took very long.

"It's just… I know what happened to you was terrible. I _saw_ it happened to you." Raven's yellow eyes had gone glossy and distant with memory. "One minute I was telling that joke about the anti-mutant bigot and the next you were – god, Charles, I don't even remember the gunshot, I just remember seeing you on the sidewalk and you weren't moving." She hesitated and, indicating her temple, asked, "Can you just…?"

The memories were right there on the surface of her mind. Charles kept himself to those only, but they were more than enough, a moment of utter stillness like the world after an earthquake before it lurched into violent emotion again, panic and confusion and what the hell was that and what happened Charles where's Charles – _oh god Charles_ , she's bending over him and he's so still, and even though his eyes are open he isn't looking at anything and in the half-light of the street she can see a shadow that isn't a proper shadow – it's spreading (very slowly, but still, it's spreading) and she wants to shake Charles to get him to wake up (he can see her hand on his shoulder, god it's almost worse seeing himself lying there than being unconscious) but Moira moves in quickly to stop her, pointing to the shadow that is actually blood and telling her to call 911 _now_.

"You were in surgery for ages," Raven hiccupped. "You were conscious for a bit while we were waiting for the ambulance, but you weren't lucid. You kept asking Moira why you two were working so late. And I couldn't do _anything_ , just make sure they knew you were a telepath so they didn't give you the crazy drugs and sit next to the guy driving the ambulance and then sit in the waiting room for fucking _ages_ until they let me see you."

Raven coughed, her fingers tightening around her forearms so they bit into the delicate scales. "And I know that seeing it is obviously not the same as living it. I really do. And I know that that night was just the start of it for you, with therapy and that stupid, godawful trial and all. But it's just… When you could finally start walking again you weren't even happy. It was like you wanted to start walking just so you could walk back to your old life. And you never could make it back, you only kept getting worse and worse and quieter, and sometimes I got headaches from feeling you being so _angry_ or confused or something awful." She sniffled, and darted a quick look at Charles from under her lashes.

"Oh, my love." God, he had been _projecting_? It must have been only around her, in the apartment, one of the few spaces he felt safe. He hitched himself closer, careful to project only love and regret, washing against her as gently as he could. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to make it worse for you," Raven said. She let him wrap an arm around her shoulder. "But it just… I kept asking and hoping you would talk, so maybe you could get better. And I couldn't force you – you're just too stubborn," she laughed weakly, bending her head into the crook of his neck, "but you didn't seem to want to get better because you didn't think there was anything wrong. And I couldn't tell you that, because, shit, it's not my trauma."

"Some of it was, though." Not that there could be a percentage – how much suffering she had endured compared to him – but she had paid a price too, Charles reminded himself. She'd had to deal with the trial in her own way and listen to Graydon Creed insinuating that she could have planted herself in the jury to sway the vote, and then listen to the Friends of Humanity pick up the idea and run with it. Ororo had advised her to stay at the house with Charles as much as possible, which she had done because Charles had still been in his wheelchair and half-incoherent with pain… And those had been the times when it had been the worst, locked up and helpless as humans slandered her brother and herself, and she'd had to cope with both her anger and his.

He stroked his fingers through the thick, stiff wave of her red hair. The scales on her face were so fine and sleek they felt nearly like the softest human skin; aside from the heavier ridges over her brows, they were so finely made, the better to mimic the infinite varieties of the human face, perhaps.

"I wish you had felt welcome to tell me that," Charles confessed. "They were… they were words I needed to hear, for your sake and mine. And I'm so sorry I made you think your help was unwelcome."

"It was," Raven pointed out. "Like you ever take advice from your little sister."

"And I should have been humble enough to ask," Charles admitted. "But I am a rather prideful asshole am I not?"

"You are." Raven sighed shakily. Under her scales she was warm, her lashes damp with tears. "But I don't… I can't ask you to apologize, Charles. The entire situation is so fucked, it seems wrong."

"It's getting better," Charles said quietly. He shifted a little, his spine protesting at the awkward position. "I promise, Raven, I _am_ getting better." He offered her a smile, even though with her head bowed down she couldn't see it. "I'm taking yoga, you know."

She pulled back and regarded him skeptically, her expression the one she always used to work out if he was lying. Short of telepathic manipulation, he'd never been able to fool her.

"You're telling the truth," she said, and frowned as if she didn't quite believe herself. "You – Charles Francis Xavier – are taking _yoga classes_."

"Just one so far." It was probably best not to mention the second private session – and, Charles found, he wanted to keep that for himself anyway, Raven's teasing aside. "And don't mock it, it's an ancient discipline that has been shown to provide many benefits in terms of physical and mental health, especially for telepaths."

"Oh, I'm not mocking yoga," Raven said. She offered him a smile, hesitant but still real. The first blossoming of happiness – no, not happiness, that was a ways off yet; better call it relief – brushed against him. Shielded as he was they were faint; the brightness in her eyes, the tears still there but no longer angry, and the wide curve of her mouth spoke more clearly.

Charles rolled his eyes. "Of course you're not."

"You did feel better last night," Raven admitted. She reached for his hand and held it in both of hers, his fair and sturdy against her dark blue and her long fingers. "It's why I didn't get on your case too much about skipping out on me and Irene. Was it good? Is the instructor hot? Did you make an ass out of yourself doing all the positions?"

"It was good," Charles said, and elected not to acknowledge the second and third parts of the question. "Different, but I think maybe I need different, no?"

"Different is good," Raven said, and her hands dropped away from his so she could hug him properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am now officially over the 50,000 words/month minimum for NaNo, and the month isn't half finished. This pleases me.


	14. Here there be [1.4]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ah, you're awake," said a voice.
> 
> The first thing Erik knew, other than the voice (and that the voice was gentle, light but with depths underneath it) was softness under his cheek and a stale smell in his nose. When he opened his eyes – glaring bright light, shifting as if it reflected off moving glass – he saw he'd been placed on a couch, its cushions a dusty red satin, and someone had thrown a silk sheet, also dusty, over him. He sneezed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a plotbunny that's been nibbling at me for a bit thanks to all the dragon fics going around.
> 
> I've got the next part sketched out in my head, but first there should be another chapter of the yoga fic and also something that I just thought of today but didn't have time to get to because I stupidly packed away the stylus for my drawing tablet.
> 
> Pairings: Erik/Charles (in a way)  
> Warnings: minor violence  
> Advertisements: Erik being an angstbucket, Charles being very large and awkwardly comforting

"Charles! _Charles!_ "

The air was all smoke, and it and the terror clogged his throat so he could hardly breathe, let alone scream. Erik stumbled through the eyrie's ruins, nearly breaking his ankle on the treacherous rocks, sliding down debris piles and skidding

He heard Raven calling hoarsely in the distance, unused to her true voice after so long. She was behind him; even if she'd been in front of him, he would only have seen a large, dim shadow in the smoke and settling dust. That same dust made his eyes and throat sting so he was half blind and was shouting his throat raw, but he kept going, cursing and calling _Charles Charles Charles_ at the dead space in his mind.

 _Shaw, I will –_ But no, Shaw was dead. Whatever triumph Erik had felt at that, seeing Shaw plunging to his doom, impaled on the metal spike that crowned his own eyrie, had long vanished.

He hit a ruined piece of masonry hard, unable to get his hands up in time to absorb the blow. Erik shook it off, distantly aware that he would not be able to shake off bruised or broken ribs, and kept going.

"CHARLES!"

The air rang with Raven's call, still as a bell for a long moment. Erik's head ached, a burning line across his forehead and a brand on his temple from his helmet, and deep under his skull the resonance of Raven's cry filled everything up so he thought it would burst.

Raven fell silent. Erik, leaning against the masonry to catch his breath and blink away dust-tears, strained to hear anything over the thundering of his heart.

A hand, licked over by dying flames but still intact, fumbled its way out of ruined masonry. Erik shifted the stones as quickly as he could, shoving aside rubble and rock and splintered timbers, enough to clasp that hand in his (and it _burned_ through the thick leather of his gloves) and pull. The body came free with a cry and a clatter, so suddenly Erik nearly fell over backward with the young man cradled in his arms.

"Charles?" Erik hefted the still form, praying the warmth wasn't all that was left of a much greater fire. He ran a quick eye over the pale body in his arms, cataloguing scratches and cuts, the blood vivid against fair and freckled skin; the bronzy hair was damp, but with sweat from the heat, not from any wounds Erik could find. A bump just behind his ear might explain the unconsciousness; when Erik touched it, he got nothing other than the stickiness of drying blood on his fingertips. "Charles, _please_."

 _Just unconscious_ , Erik told himself. He placed his palm firmly against Charles's breast, over where the heart should be and searched for the slow, rumbling thunder of a heartbeat.

* * *

"Ah, you're awake," said a voice.

The first thing Erik knew, other than the voice (and that the voice was gentle, light but with depths underneath it) was softness under his cheek and a stale smell in his nose. When he opened his eyes – glaring bright light, shifting as if it reflected off moving glass – he saw he'd been placed on a couch, its cushions a dusty red satin, and someone had thrown a silk sheet, also dusty, over him. He sneezed.

"I am sorry about that," said the same voice as before, "but I don't often get visitors."

He'd been stripped of his armor, which alarmed him. Reason told him an enemy would not have given him a comfortable (if dusty) bed after taking his armor off, but reason had also told him Shaw and his men would not have returned to the eyrie after ransacking it, and he'd been almost mortally wrong about that.

 _Shaw_. Erik struggled to sit upright, pushing impatiently at the sheet. His sword, fuck, were was his damn sword –

The voice interrupted, its gentleness fading into panic. "Do be careful! You've had a nasty shock…"

"I'm fine," Erik grunted. His head swam as if his brains were sloshing about his skull and he had to catch his breath and steel himself against the image and the nausea both. The darkness stirred behind his eyelids, splashes of color mingled with the blackness, strangely hypnotic and – no, he was not going to be sick, not here, not already vulnerable as he was. He swallowed thickly against it once, twice, and breathed in through his nose.

When he finally mastered himself enough to open his eyes and not want to die at the needle-stabs of pain, he had to close his eyes again and open them once more to credit what he was seeing.

The dragon's bulk took up a considerable part of what looked to be a long-abandoned hall. In the torches – lit, Erik supposed, with the dragon's breath – its scales glittered bronze, the spikes along the crest of its serpentine neck almost tawny like the pelt of a lion. Its wings – immense if swept out to their full span – lay tucked close to the dragon's sides, as if the dragon were being conscious of its space, and shone faintly iridescent in places. Its tail flicked lazily, almost bored, shuffling heavily across the paving stones. One great blue eye watched him, slit-pupiled like a cat's, filled with intelligence and delight and amusement.

"I'm glad you didn't catch cold," the dragon – _the voice_ said. One lip curled away from its fangs. A _smile_ , Erik thought irrationally, or a dragonish equivalent. "I got you here as quickly as possible, but I had to fly high and fast, and I was afraid you'd be chilled."

Erik's last memories involved falling down the hillside, rocks battering at his shoulders, his spine, his face – a dozen tiny cuts still stung – and hearing nothing but his own cries and the heavy thumps of his body against the earth. From the dragon's words ( _the dragon's words_ ), he must have fallen from the eyrie's west side, where a deep, slow river ran close to its base. He would have perhaps slid the last few feet, and only fortune had stopped him from plunging into the depths altogether.

"You can drown in only a few inches of water," the dragon told him, sounding strangely teacherish. "It's a good thing I happened by and saw you. Although if you hadn't drowned, Shaw's men might have gotten you. They were quite close."

Erik shuddered, half from fear of Shaw's dungeons and half rage for failing to kill the man yet again. 

"I carried you here in my claw," continued the dragon. It flexed one of its feet, the sickle-like talons shining in the torchlight like swords. "Don't worry," it added when Erik's hands flew to his – uninjured – chest, "I was very careful, and your armor is good armor."

"Thank you," Erik said faintly. Finding himself more or less whole brought him more back to himself; finding himself in the company of a dragon… Well, he had grown up with the creatures, and this particular dragon seemed disinclined to violence. And the dragon, to judge from its words, had kept his armor.

"Why did you save me?" Erik swept one more comprehensive eye over what he could see of the dragon. It wore none of the marks of Erik's eyrie, or any eyrie for that matter. A _wild_ dragon, then.

The dragon shifted as if making itself comfortable. The light rippled along its scales. It was altogether beautiful, Erik thought helplessly, with its long, graceful neck and mantled wings.

"Anyone who's an enemy of Shaw's is a friend of mine," the dragon said. "He's taken to enslaving dragons – he has these collars he uses, that extinguish our fire if we do not obey. He has my sister."

"Enslaving dragons…" He'd heard the rumors, but hadn't credited them: it was against every belief that defined the dragon-kin and their alliance with the dragons. _We came from the same fire; we are brothers and sisters._ Thinking over it more closely, he remembered seeing dull gray iron – enchanted, it must be – around the necks of the dragons from Shaw's stronghold, and chains with manacles on them dangling from the saddles, knocking metallically against the sides of the dragons they rode. "He took – he took some of our dragons captive. The ones who resisted."

Shaw would have threatened the dragons with the deaths of their humans to force them into compliance, Erik decided. The terms of the alliance were very specific: a dragon could not bring harm to any human who dwelt in its eyrie, and the dragons – dangerously literal-minded – had traded their freedom for the safety of the humans to whom they'd bonded. _At least Anya had not had to face that_ , young as she'd been. Erik swallowed hard again, aware that the dragon was watching him.

"Their fires were dead or they were gone by the time I arrived," the dragon said quietly, its voice shading to a faint rumble Erik almost couldn't decipher. It said something else, in the language dragons kept for each other, and then more loudly, more formally, "I'm very sorry, Erik Lehnsherr of Eisenhardt."

Erik didn't have anything to say to that. He managed a nod, and the dragon sighed.

It was the strangest dragon Erik had ever met. Most of the dragons he knew, of course, had been from the eyrie, and the Eisenhardt dragons had tended to a specific personality type. _Stubborn as mountains_ other eyries said, stubborn and opinionated, and absolutely unshiftable once they decided they didn't want to be shifted. This dragon seemed almost pliant and… _deferential_ , if such could be said of a dragon. Polite, Erik thought, in a way that was entirely separate from the strange sense of ritual and decorum that dragons possessed.

"I did manage to find some things for you," the dragon said after a pause. Erik watched through half-shut eyes as the dragon shuffled around to the side, awkward even in the gigantic space of the hall. It was much larger than the dragons of Erik's eyrie, despite being slender with long, gracile limbs and a strong-looking but delicately sinuous neck.

The dragon had been crouching in front of a table had been positioned at the very edge of the hall, near a colonnade that led to one of the side galleries. And on it – Erik stared.

Gold was strewn carelessly across the top and spilled to the floor, frosted here and there with silver, gems mixed in like wildflowers. Erik pushed himself to his feet and walked unsteadily across the flagstones to examine it, surprised – and yet not – to see coins of ancient mint and goblets set with runes and precious stones, swords and daggers made for ornament rather than use, armor that had gone out of fashion decades ago, engraved minutely and chased with bronze, malachite plates and the pieces of a chess set, the knights' eyes inset with emeralds and the bishop's crown with rubies.

And there was more, piled carelessly at the head of the hall where the throne would once have been. A kingdom's worth of wealth lay in this hall, the armor rusting quietly into uselessness, the treasure undistributed. Fury cleared the worst of the blurriness from his vision, his hand closing tightly around one of the ivory rooks the first welcome pain since he'd woken up. 

"You killed people for this." He had never seen the evidence or aftermath of a wild dragon attack, but they were rumored to do this, steal anything fire-forged and hoard it. For what purpose no one had ever really understood; the eyrie dragons had never been inclined to explain it.

"Of course not," the dragon said, offended. It snorted, and infant flames sparked dangerously. "Some of this I inherited from my father, and the rest… well, you humans become so terribly _angry_ and _possessive_ about gold and jewels and such, and the poor people have little enough as it is without having dukes and princes destroying their land fighting over it. So," the dragon shook out and resettled his wings, a curiously pleased gesture, "I simply take the gold from the ones who are greedy enough to take it but not give it away, and every now and then I… redistribute it. A family here, a poor widow there, an orphanage after that, and so on."

A charitable wild dragon. Clearly Erik had hit his head harder than he'd thought.

"Oh, I wasn't always wild," the dragon said off-handedly. "My father was, but I was born in an eyrie; my mother's allegiance was to Westchester, before she and my father ran afoul of each other."

"But you were born in an eyrie." Dragons were truthful almost to the point of falsehood. _Examine closely the sayings of dragons, but not too closely_ ran the adage. A cuckoo? There were dragons who were _born_ to eyries but never gave allegiance, instead escaping and returning to the wild. This dragon must have left young, to be as large as it was.

"I was three summers when Shaw destroyed Westchester in one of his raids." The dragon shivered once, as if shaking off the memory. "He left me for dead, for I was very young, and suffered a broken wing in the attack." The dragon unfurled his right wing with a soft, heavy sound like a flag catching the breeze; a cruel-looking tear ran through the leathery fabric stretched between the framing of the bones, healed over but debilitating at the time the dragon had suffered it." And anyway, we non-affiliated dragons don't like being called _wild_ when we're really quite civilized." The crocodilian mouth seemed to turn up at the corner. "We gave you your language, you know. We gave you _fire_."

"Of course," Erik said, and felt foolish. Any member of the dragon-kin knew the stories.

"Calling us _wild_ does little more than say we're a threat to be contained," the dragon added.

"Forgive me," muttered Erik, more chagrined than he thought he'd be. He thought of Anya – for a moment, no more; she was gone along with the rest of the eyrie and Erik's family, his parents, his friends, the trainers, the dragons who were captive or who were dead. From the dragon's expression, the sudden sobering of those blue eyes like the ocean when the sun had gone, Erik supposed the dragon had caught his thoughts.

"I wouldn't have," the dragon apologized, "except you think so very loudly."

"I'll thank you to stop," Erik said, as frostily as he could manage. He suspected the words came out more broken than anything, fractured under the weight of exhaustion and a grief he was only now allowing himself to feel.

"Of course," the dragon said. It moved a little further down the hall, great haunches working slowly and talons rasping themselves to points on the flagstones. "As I was telling you before you were… distracted, I was able to find some food for you, and clean clothes. Although," the dragon regarded him critically, "I'm not entirely sure they will fit. And there is a tub – well, of sorts – with rainwater, and I can heat it if you wish."

The idea of a wild dragon waiting on him struck him as so completely ludicrous, all Erik could do was laugh despite the wrenching headache and nausea. At some point, between imagining the dragon using its breath to heat bathwater and crawling in to sleep between those dusty sheets again, the laughter transformed to something more raw and uncertain, _tears_ , fuck it all, burning the back of his throat and stinging his eyes. Erik swallowed them before they could become hysterical.

"Thank you for your hospitality," he said, once he was certain of his voice. "I won't impose on your good will too long." Politeness on the surface, but dragons always had a price to ask in return for favors granted.

"Of course." The dragon bowed its head. Erik eyed it suspiciously; in his experience, dragons never let an opportunity to barter pass by, if the human they dealt with were not one of the humans to which it had allegiance, or the particular human to which the dragon had bound itself. "But at least stay long enough to recover your strength, and arm yourself from the hoard, if you will. I have no use for swords and such, and the orphans don't either."

Erik snorted, and despite his mistrust of the dragon, scraped together a passable meal from what the dragon had provided. He stared for a moment at the dried meat and grapes and soft cheese set on a minutely-crafted plate, plain water in an onyx goblet, before setting to. The food and drink chased away the headache that had collected under his temple and, after a bath – which the dragon, true to his word, obligingly heated – Erik climbed into fresh clothes and felt almost human again.

Not _new_. He gathered up a sword and lay it on the floor next to his couch before folding himself into bed, curling around the ache settled in his chest. _Anya_. If he cupped his palm just so, her small head could have fit into the cradle of it; closing his eyes he felt the smooth scales of her crest pushing into his hand.

 _I am sorry_ , the dragon said quietly into Erik's private grief, ignoring Erik's earlier orders to stay out of his head. _I know what it is to be alone, Erik… and perhaps you would not have to be alone, nor I, any longer_.

"Seeing as I'm leaving tomorrow…" Erik said, glaring at the dragon. Earlier the dragon had snuffed most of the lights except for one torch at the end of the hall, so now it loomed a darker shadow against the darkness, its scales limned with starlight coming from high windows.

"Where will you go?" the dragon asked guilelessly.

"To find Shaw, of course," Erik snapped. "If any of my kin are still alive, I need to rescue them. And I need to seek vengeance for those who have died."

The dragon's reptilian eye looked almost sorrowful in the reflected torchlight that fell on it, and Erik _felt_ the sorrow, a sudden wave of it that left him short of breath. "As I said, I grieve for you and what you have lost, Erik Lehnsherr. But consider… it would be unwise to go running off alone to Shaw's eyrie. The dragons you find there, your own and the others he's taken, may not be able to help you. To keep their humans safe, they may try to stop you."

"What do you propose, then? Are you going to stop a guest from leaving?"

"Never," the dragon said stiffly. "Rather, a chance for you to accept help and to become part of something greater than yourself – greater than the two of us, on our own."

And then, _Do you mind terribly if we speak like this?_

Erik stared at the dragon, eyes wide. He pushed himself up on his sofa, painfully aware of his vulnerability – the sword by his feet was useless and he had no idea what waited for him beyond the hall door – but determined to have this conversation with proper dignity.

 _It's very forward_ , the dragon said, and despite the contrite tone of the thought those astonishing eyes had fixed on Erik, _and I am rather old to take a companion for the first time, but I would like my sister freed – all my sisters and brothers freed – and you want Shaw dead… this seems the most expedient way to do it._

"Are you…" Erik's traitorous heart leaped at what it thought – no, what it _knew_ – the dragon was offering, out of his reach before he could pull it back.

 _Yes, I am_ , the dragon said. It hesitantly uncoiled itself and eased its great body across the floor, close enough for Erik to touch its snout, if he wanted. This close, he saw the lambent glow of the dragon's internal fire through the delicate tissues of its nostrils and knew if he touched them they would almost be hot to burning.

Entering into a covenant with a dragon was something done after years – after years the rider and dragon had spent learning each other from the dragon's hatching or the rider's seventh birthday, and only after the most solemn, sacrosanct agreements between the two. They weren't done like this, with one half still feeling half-covered in sand and dried river-water and the other half watching with wide, anxious eyes as if uncertain of its welcome.

"What… what is your name?" Erik asked hoarsely.

For answer, the dragon gave him a long, whispering sigh and a tumble of colors, from the orange carapace of a flame to the pure blue at the heart of it, and a succession of images Erik could barely parse.

 _Tsharharallas_ , the dragon told him.

"Charles," Erik said, and set the flat of his hand between the dragon's eyes.

* * *

One of those images came to him as they camped in the foothills the next day. They had come this far only because Charles had permitted it; he'd continued to fuss over his new rider's health, only a day out of bed and with hardly any time to prepare, and no proper supplies to speak of. While Erik watched, Charles exhaled a soft jet of flame and ignited the sticks underneath the rabbit Erik had caught, and in the sudden, dancing fire he saw a small dragon, barely out of hatchling-hood, attempting to groom the scales of a rather younger dragon. Its scales were blue, the deep blue-green of the sea.

 _My sister_ , Charles said. He'd curled up, interposing his great bulk between Erik and the forest. _Usually Shaw doesn't take the young ones; they aren't useful, and he isn't patient. But he took her to coerce my mother into going with him. I think she believes me dead._ The dragon paused. _I saw myself as her teacher. I would have shown her how to fly._

"We'll rescue her," Erik said, speaking out loud because this – the bond, the covenant, whatever it was – was too new, too strange. Raw, after Anya. He picked at the rabbit desultorily until Charles made an impatient noise indicating he should eat properly. "And avenge my eyrie."

 _Of course_. Charles slanted him a look. _But if you want revenge, you should probably get some sleep, no?_

"You are very dictatorial," Erik grumbled around his last mouthful of rabbit. "Don't you need to hunt?"

"I had just finished eating when I found your eyrie," Charles said aloud, as if refusing to dignify the answer with telepathic speech. "I'll be good for a while yet. Why? Are you concerned?"

"I don't want you falling out of the sky." Erik said. Charles huffed in reply, but otherwise let him eat and clean up undisturbed.

Later that evening, with the fire burning low into its ashes, Erik found his hasty packing from earlier had not equipped him against the cold forest night. He'd taken off his armor – his _own_ armor, the hard leather with dragonscale plating – and laid it aside because sleeping in it was a torment, but with the chill creeping up through the dew-damp ground and only a thin pad to shield him from it on one side and a pair of soft but impractical blankets on the other, Erik was starting to reconsider putting it back on.

 _Oh for…_ Charles growled in his head, and of course he'd been listening in; bonded dragons were incapable of remaining ignorant of their humans' physical states, just as Erik (when he paid attention) knew Charles was still full from the hunt and not nearly as serene as he seemed, with his sister so close now.

Before he thought think much more about it, Erik found himself picked up delicately but inexorably and inescapably by a giant clawed foot. He cursed and considered twisting around to fight, but that would win him nothing except looking like a fool flailing suspended in midair and possibly a disorienting, admonishing shake, as a disobedient hatchling would be shaken by its parent.

Charles, taking Erik's mutinous silence for agreement, tucked him close to his chest, pressed close to the burning, perpetual furnace of the fire that was the dragon's soul. The dragon's heart rumbled with its peculiar beat, one long roll of thunder punctuated at regular intervals by a _thump-thump_ that lay closer to the human heart in its rhythm. When Charles sighed, the heat from his exhalation settled around Erik, dry and light and better than any blanket, and under Charles's anxious scrutiny – he'd twisted his neck and head around so he could see Erik as best he could, his pointed snout balanced neatly on the grass – Erik fell asleep.


	15. Here there be [2.4]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The covenant between humans and dragons was, in the way of dragons, deceptively simple, a mutual binding of wills to the protection of each other and the eyrie. When the first covenant had begun, no one living could say; the dragons claimed it had existed from the very beginning, when the first dragons and dragon-kin were born from the first flames that forged the world. It was so profound that the dragons, who had invented language, had no word for it, but like all things dragonish, it took its existence from the creatures that willed it into being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blah, I'm sorry this is short and late! I ended up having almost no time to write today.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles (in a way)  
> Also starring: Moira, Darwin  
> Warnings: minor violence  
> Advertisements: Swords! Magic! Dragons!

**Chapter two**

The next morning, instead of flying directly north to Hellfire eyrie, Charles veered westward. Erik, without a saddle to strap in to and depending only on his knees and thighs to hold on, nearly fell off.

 _My apologies_. Charles did not feel remotely apologetic. _I heard some of my kin calling in the night. They may be willing to help us._

 _We're going to have to talk about how you think you should be allowed to do whatever you want_ , Erik snapped.

Charles, being much, much larger and also a thousand feet in the air at this point, ignored him. Erik flung himself at the wall of the dragon's resolve, but Charles had fixed himself utterly on his new destination and Erik's protests went unheard.

The covenant between humans and dragons was, in the way of dragons, deceptively simple, a mutual binding of wills to the protection of each other and the eyrie. When the first covenant had begun, no one living could say; the dragons claimed it had existed from the very beginning, when the first dragons and dragon-kin were born from the first flames that forged the world. It was so profound that the dragons, who had invented language, had no word for it, but like all things dragonish, it took its existence from the creatures that willed it into being.

No dragon – or dragon-kin that Erik knew of – had ever broken faith in the entirety of the long history shared between them. Wild dragons were different: they gave no allegiance. The eyrie dragons said they were the reminder of the creativity and destructiveness of the first fires and simply accepted their wildness as another facet of dragon nature. _Fire is not an easily tamable thing_ , they said.

For all his apparent docility, Erik decided, Charles was not an easily tamable thing.

They flew on slowly, Charles being careful to keep his course low and steady, along the long, reliable lines of the valley air and away from the more treacherous gusts that rolled down the mountains and foothills. Slowly, Erik let himself relax into the movement of Charles's flight, bent close along the sinuous back to catch the heat the dragon put out like a furnace and holding as best he could to the dragon's neck.

 _I don't suppose_ , he thought, _if we're making this idiotic detour anyway, we could find a proper harness for you._

Charles sent back indignation and banked – not hard, but enough for Erik to hold tight even as Charles so carefully readjusted himself between Erik's legs to keep him steady. _No proper dragon would let you fall, but very well. We are going into battle, I suppose._

Erik's heart thrilled, thinking of that, and it made Charles's disobedience a little – a little – easier to bear.

They found the dragons in question a half-hour's slow flight to the west, accompanied by two humans, standing under a thin shelter of pines growing where a foothill crested and broke down into a steep ravine paved with rocks. Charles tucked his wings in – against his will Erik had been keeping an eye on the broken one, even though clearly Charles had healed well enough that the injury gave him no trouble – and came in for landing, gliding smoothly until his great rear feet hit the earth. Erik leaned forward into the hot curve of Charles's neck, gripping tight until the dragon relaxed to all fours.

The two riders and their dragons watched them closely, the dragons clearly expectant while the riders remained prudently wary. Charles huffed a dragon-greeting to the others – they were both young, Erik saw, one of them a rough, unpolished gold while the other glittered copper – and even nodded his head politely to the riders, who stared at him in bafflement.

"Well met," one rider, a woman, said grudgingly after some silent communication with her dragon. She had a fine-boned face and seemed slight under her armor; her auburn hair was short and pulled back with pins, perhaps making her look sterner and older than she was. Then again, Erik thought as she offered her hand – callused, marked with burn scars – probably not. "We hadn't looked to find another rider out so far in the empty lands."

"Life is full of surprises," Erik grunted. Behind him (close behind him, actually; Charles was surprisingly stealthy for a creature so large) Charles sighed and sent an admonishing _Be nice. Banshee and Havok are under the impression you are civilized. Please do not make me a liar._

For a wonder, the woman barked a laugh and said, "It is, at that. The dragons said to expect you, but even so, we thought it likely you would pass by. Strangers have little time for talking these days, and less time for trust." Her eyes, a green-gray, hardened and the hand she'd extended to him strayed to the sword hilted at her hip. "We likewise have little time for either, and so I should think introductions are in order."

 _Be polite_ , Charles sent again, and nudged Erik with his snout for good measure.

"Erik and," Erik paused. _What do I name you for them?_ Charles sent back his reply. "X."

"Moira and Armando of Muir eyrie," the woman said, gesturing to the man, "and these are Banshee and Havok." If she caught Erik's lack of eyrie affiliation, she gave no sign.

"Pleasure," the one called Armando said. He was tall, probably lanky under the bulk of his armor, with the characteristic flat, broad sword of the western peoples strapped across his back along with a brace of throwing spears. "Pardon me asking, but we weren't looking to find any riders out here." This was said with a speaking look for the lack of saddle on Charles's back and probably for the lack of any obvious markings.

"We weren't either," Erik said in as frosty a tone as he could manage. "What are you doing out here?"

Charles, meanwhile, had come out from behind Erik and was now looming over the two younger dragons, eyeing them proprietarily. Erik braced himself for some kind of confrontation – who knew what a wild dragon would do with two younger, eyrie-raised ones, and he had no idea how well the young ones were trained – but Charles only stretched out his long neck, snuffed Banshee behind his crest, and began rumbling in the way dragons did when they were pleased about something.

 _Banshee_ , the name was a flurry of images and sounds in Erik's head, blurred away from the dragon's true name, which only his rider knew, _says that they're looking for allies to help defend their eyrie against Shaw. They heard what happened to Eisenhardt and are worried._

Erik turned to Moira. "X says you're anticipating an attack from Shaw."

Moira and Armando exchanged grim looks and Moira said, "That's true. After Eisenhardt, it makes sense that he would come for us. Our contacts say that he's returned to Hellfire to see to the," she paused, eyeing Erik's cheek tattoo uncomfortably, "the prisoners, but that it's likely he'll be on the move again before winter makes the flying difficult."

"And you're hoping the other eyries will come to your defense," Erik said flatly. Charles looked up from his communion with Banshee and Havok to glare at him, a wisp of disapproving _be polite they can help us_ wafting out along with a heavy sigh. Erik ignored it. "How many have you visited so far? I can guarantee you that none of them will send riders; they'll fear that Shaw will see them weakened and attack them instead."

"Our captain thought of this," Armando admitted, "but asking the other eyries to go against Shaw in force has met with failure as well. There are rumors out now that he has some device or magic to – " he paused, dark brows furrowing, " – to _bank_ the dragons' fires."

 _Charles?_ In his head, the dragon was a tumult of confusion.

 _That's as good a word for it as any, I suppose. Both Banshee and Havok are young; they don't understand these things. Dragons as a rule don't understand taming anyway, but Havok thinks it is like the magic humans use on horses and dogs._ Charles hesitated before adding, _but different_ , which was no help at all.

"No one's seen it," Moira put in, "we've only heard it by report and inference. A spy who came to us last week said that there are very few dragons at Hellfire, for how many are reported to have been taken."

"They say the captured dragons are taken into the eyrie, while the humans are put to work. But Shaw hasn't let any of the captured dragons out to fly, and those that do wear collars."

Erik shut his eyes against the grief and the anger and the possibilities. They could be dead; if anyone had worked out how to kill a dragon, it would be Shaw. Not that dragons were immortal, but they tended to the indestructible; outside of truly great age, falls and accidents, or the rare fight between fellow dragons – and grief; they said dragons could pine away – they were very difficult to kill. He thought of his mother and father, missing from the wreckage, Magda and Magnus forced to who knew what indignities to keep them alive. By his reckoning they had been gone a week, more than enough time for anything to happen.

"You won't find any help from any of the eyries," he said at last, ignoring Moira's impatient _we know that_ , "and Shaw will take each of you apart, one by one, unless all of you stand against him."

Armando bent close so Moira could whisper something in his ear. From his station over with the other dragons, Charles said, _They've been having the same thoughts; Havok says that's almost all they've talked of since undertaking this mission, other than the likelihood of them returning to Muir and finding it destroyed._ The dragon detached himself from the juveniles and stalked closer. _If you are polite, Erik, I believe they can be convinced to help us._

 _There's no time to be polite, Charles. There is no time._ To Moira and Armando, he said, "I mean to leave for Hellfire, and I won't be turned aside. You can come with me or return empty-handed to your eyrie, if you want."

"You and your dragon against Shaw. Alone." From Moira's skeptical look, it was clear how much she doubted Charles was Erik's dragon.

"If we have to be," Erik said and then, striving for conciliatoriness, added, "but we would not mind it otherwise."

"Well, it's not going to be pretty reporting back to Oliver and your father with a whole handful of _no thank-you_ 's from the other eyries," Armando said reflectively. "Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb."

"Hanging's the least of our worries," Moira grumbled. "Very well, Lehnsherr. We'll come with. At the very least we can get some intelligence regarding what Shaw's doing before you go off to commit suicide."

 _I won't allow that_ , Charles told him. The great head drew alongside Erik, the blue cat's-eye focusing on him sharply. _You can have something to live for, after, even if you don't believe you can have it._

* * *

Moira and Armando had a spare rig kept for emergencies, little more than a breastplate and leather band with eyelets for Erik's leg straps. The breastplate barely made it around Charles's chest, and, after wrestling with a leather-punch, Erik managed to get the girth to fit around the massively-vaulted ribs that caged the dragon's internal fire. Charles tolerated the proceedings and glowed gently with amusement even as he tucked his head in against his chest to worry at the breastplate.

"It's not rubbing the wrong way, is it?" Erik asked as he double-checked how the harness lay against the scales, and told himself he was not in the least bit concerned.

 _No; it only feels peculiar._ Charles twisted around to inspect the saddle, such as it was – only that leather band with a spare pad underneath it to prevent the unyielding plating of Charles's back from abrading it. _I was too young to be introduced to the harness when Shaw came. I will thank you to keep any spare hackamores to yourself, though._

Instead of saying anything or pointing out that maybe a bridle was needed given his earlier behavior, Erik tapped Charles's wing and, when the dragon shifted it back, used Charles's leg as a mounting block to swing himself up. Charles resituated his wing, testing it against the freshening breeze, flexing under him as Erik looped the security straps around his thighs and pulled them tight. A true saddle would provide more security – stirrups for one and a deeper seat for another – but even when he'd been riding bareback, Erik had to admit that Charles was conscientious, _careful_ of him.

 _Of course I'm careful of you_. The dragon threaded the thought through with fondness, soft and warm but still dangerous for all of that. _You aren't alone, Erik, and I'm not either. Not anymore._

Moira and Armando were already packed and mounted, Banshee and Havok pulling at their reins impatiently. Without waiting for anyone to work out who ought to take point, Charles sprang into the air with a great sweep of his wings, his joy sudden and sharp against Erik's mind. Erik held to the great, flexing length of Charles's neck as tightly as he could and tried not to let Charles's joy become his own.

It was inevitable, of course, that he'd be asked questions. The flight delayed them until evening came, which was still not long enough in Erik's opinion. With autumn beginning its swift descent to winter the air caught cold the moment the sun fell behind the mountains, and flying at altitude even in insulated leathers – which Erik did not have, only layers of awkwardly-fitted wool and two hooded capes – would quickly become uncomfortable. The valleys here were simply cups and bowls dug into the mountains, suspended far above the warm, sheltered lowlands that lay a long week's flight in the distance.

This meant (also of course) that, after Erik had collected his share of food from the fire and grudgingly accepted water from Armando, Charles insisted on Erik sitting against him again. On the other side of their campfire the two Muir riders were already huddled in blankets with their dragons curled around them.

 _For young dragons, they're very polite_ , Charles said to him. _A bit rough around the edges, particularly Havok, but experience will smooth them out._

"They're probably nervous around you, seeing as you're twice their size," Erik said around a mouthful of bread.

"Why do you talk to your dragon like that?" Moira asked. Her eyes glinted hard and green in the firelight, assessing as they swept over Erik's face, picking out the three runes tattooed across his cheekbone, the absence of those same runes on Charles's neck.

"Why does it matter?" Behind him, Charles was relaxed. _Amused_ , Erik realized, quivering slightly with dragonish laughter and thinking at him, _It is a bit odd when you talk to me out loud. Many riders do, of course, use human-speech with their dragons, but not exclusively._

"Like I said earlier, little time for talking or trust." Moira had her dagger out now, plying it through the dirt. "We were talking earlier," she gave nothing to indicate if that had been herself and Banshee or all four of them, "and got to wondering if you weren't trying to set up like Shaw yourself – finding a way to enslave dragons."

"Shaw destroyed Erik's family, as I believe you know," Charles grumbled, sounding distinctly less amused than before. "And _I_ can tell you that I am here by my own desire. I have my own reasons for seeing Shaw overthrown."

"I told you the truth. We," Erik indicated the dragon behind him, "met when he saved my life after Shaw destroyed my eyrie and took and _enslaved_ my family. Do you need any further proof than that?"

"Of course not," Armando said. "We couldn't determine the nature of your relationship, and with rumors going around…"

"It's a relationship of convenience, nothing more," Erik snapped, and to indicate the conversation was closed, drew his blankets up to his chin and closed his eyes.

Charles eased himself to the side and tucked himself around Erik more securely. _Protectively_ , Erik thought with an irrational stab of fear. They'd bonded, and whether or not he could bring himself to acknowledge that, Charles had made a promise, and to dragons… to dragons that _meant_ something.

Against his closed eyelids another image from Charles's naming (and that was only yesterday, it seemed so long ago now) came to him: the blasted runs of an eyrie giving way to flattened grass and then a hard-packed roadway. He was so weak he could barely stumble along on his exhausted legs, dragging behind him a wing that seared cold with pain. His mother had gone days ago – he could no longer feel her – and his sister too had vanished, no matter how plaintively he called for them. All of them had gone, the boy who had been tending him, the hold mistress, the other dragons who tolerated his and Raven's antics with the usual indulgence shown to hatchlings not old enough to leave the crèche. Most creatures might have given up and met their end, but the source of a dragon's fire was its _will-to-be_ and his fire had not extinguished, so he crawled on.

Eventually he heard noises drawing closer, the creak of wheels and the reliable four-count clopping that belonged to a horse or a mule trudging along. He coughed and cried out as best he could, his chest aching with the terrible, creeping cold, and then the four-count walk of the animal sped up into a reluctant trot. Then he heard the lighter, quicker footsteps of humans and booted feet came into view, and hands, and kind, amazed faces before the hands, careful of his wings, took him up.

 _A caravan family_ , Charles thought, the words not much more than the awareness of the concept attached to the memory of a large troop of people – more wagons behind the leading one, and men, women, and children flocking to see the baby dragon before the senior, the leader, told them all to back away. _They sheltered me and tended me until my wing healed and I was stronger._

 _What happened after that?_ Erik asked.

_Then I was alone again._


	16. A yoga fic [5]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I believe what Stryker took from me, in addition to my peace, was my confidence that, eventually, all citizens will accept the principle of true mutant-human integration. For months while I was in therapy – and still now – I scoff at my happiness at achieving even the most modest goals demanded by 'the normal life.' I would never think so meanly of any of my patients, or anyone – human or mutant – who found themselves in my situation. But, I believe, my hopelessness and self-derision is a reflection of my anger at being deluded enough to insist that all people can and will allow logic to govern them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry for where this chapter ends, but it was either stop it here or write for the rest of the night D:
> 
> As is the case for the rest of the yoga fic, please read the warnings.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Emma, Raven, Steve Rogers  
>  Warnings: PTSD, violence (referenced and described), emotional/physical trauma and recovery  
> Advertisements: solo (attempted) sexytiems

**Chapter five**

One time a patient had asked Charles "How do I know if everything's okay?"

Charles had lists of things to check up on – how many headaches did you have today? How many panic attacks or episodes? Were there any points at which your abilities got out of control, and how did you respond? He tried to balance those against positive experiences (What did you do today that you liked? How did your abilities respond to those activities?), because so many kids, finding themselves rapidly and irrevocably _different_ from so many of their friends, needed to see that their abilities made their lives richer and made them no less _themselves_. It was why he asked many of his kids to keep a journal, even if they moaned about the cruelty of being inflicted with even more homework.

The obvious reply would have been to review her journal and ask her to talk about her feelings on days when she had reported she'd been in a good mood, or something had made her happy, or she had managed to pick up on a friend's grief over the loss of a pet without collapsing in a sobbing ball of hysterics. But now, with Monique staring at him, waiting for an answer, Charles abruptly realized he couldn't give one.

She was of his first patients while he'd been in his residency, and the first question he'd ever been asked since starting graduate school for which he did not have an immediate answer.

 _How do they really know it's okay?_ It was sort of assumed, wasn't it, that absent trauma or difficulty occupying the conscious mind or some awareness of the _lack_ of happiness, one would be "okay." But how, Charles had wondered, did you begin to describe _okay_ without resorting to its negatives?

As he sorted through his files after arriving in his office on Monday morning, Charles thought of Monique, her feet swinging back and forth as she waited. She'd worn ballet flats and the uncomfortable-looking jeans that teenagers were so taken with these days. She had gotten a manicure that day, a present from her mother for completing three months of therapy, and she'd been happy about that.

 _Am I okay?_ he asked himself. Good grief, he had barely been in his office for months and yet the filing had somehow multiplied. He slid his case notes on Nathan Summers into place behind Quentin Quire. _Xavier, there's no way, logically speaking, that you can just suddenly be okay. Okay-ish, maybe. Different than Saturday morning, yes._

Charles slid the file drawer shut with his foot and took out his own journal, a battered leather-bound thing with pages the color of parchment. It had no lines, but his writing marched across it neatly, save in places where agitation had jogged the letters off-course.

Emma had insisted, of course. _And whatever Emma wants…_ Charles thought with a snort, turning the pages to that previous Friday's entry. Aside from the amnesia surrounding the shooting itself, his memory had remained unaffected in all the tests she'd inflicted on him, his recall still perfect. He could have recited his entire day for her, but writing – the act of committing the words to paper – had a value separate from remembering, no matter how vivid the memories.

_Three stress attacks. Two in the street going to and from the office. One less than yesterday. Both triggered by people walking too close and with purpose._

He had mentioned Erik of course, but in the most general possible terms. _Began yoga lessons today on recommendation of Drs. Rogers and Frost. My back feels better than it did. Mental balance did not last past the session ending; stress attack on the way home afterward._

The memory of Erik that next day… he would keep that to himself, Charles decided. Emma might be able to tell he was concealing something, but – Charles stared at the diary so hard his writing suddenly seemed to belong to someone else – Erik had revealed nearly as much of himself then as Charles had, and it seemed wrong to expose him. 

He turned to Sunday and specifically left out his morning activities.

_I talked with Raven and apologized for hurting her. I think we understand each other better now, and I hope we can move forward – and she can get on with her life._

_Stayed in all day, cleaning. I like it now, even though I absolutely loathed it. When I was little, my mother would have me clean my room – one less thing for the maids to do. I was very spoiled, of course, and cleaning got in the way of Raven and myself playing together. Steve introduced cleaning to me as a simple way to keep active, within reasonable limits given my injury. When I managed to dust off the wall unit without falling over, I felt as if I'd just been granted my doctorate all over again._

His next thought, at the time, had been _how fucking sad_. Charles tapped the page with his pen and added a note.

_I believe what Stryker took from me, in addition to my peace, was my confidence that, eventually, all citizens will accept the principle of true mutant-human integration. For months while I was in therapy – and still now – I scoff at my happiness at achieving even the most modest goals demanded by 'the normal life.' I would never think so meanly of any of my patients, or anyone – human or mutant – who found themselves in my situation. But, I believe, my hopelessness and self-derision is a reflection of my anger at being deluded enough to insist that all people can and will allow logic to govern them._

Erik had persuaded him to accept the validity of his own anger, but, Charles asked himself, could he ever accept _this_ , what he had just written? He'd built his practice on the theory that young mutants could weave themselves into the fabric of society, however human-dominated it might still be, and the humans in their midst would eventually welcome them for the bright, talented people they were and all they stood to offer to the world. Progress might be slow, as it remained slow in all things pertaining to equal rights, but as long as the work continued, progress _would_ be made.

And then Stryker had come.

Studies had shown that adults were four times more likely to view mutants positively if their own child was a mutant, nearly three times more likely if the mutant was a friend, close co-worker, or other close relative. Mutant acceptance was at its highest reported levels, with nearly sixty-three percent of the country reporting "favorable" views (twenty-one percent reported "unfavorable," while the remainder was divided between "insufficient knowledge," "uncertain," or "neutral"), and mutant-control legislation had been scaled back dramatically at all levels of government. By the numbers and by his own experience, Charles's side was winning.

And then Stryker had come, and along with him the pack of supporters that had come howling out of the woodwork. Charles drew a ragged breath and forced himself, temporarily, to reason. 

_A statistical inevitability_ , Charles had tried to tell himself. There _was_ that twenty-one percent, after all.

That reassurance faltered when matched against the memory of Stryker's face when Charles had told him, very calmly, that _your son is a perfectly healthy twelve-year-old boy who has just manifested psionic abilities. With proper training and counseling he can control them and his life will be that much richer and fuller for being able to access his gift. But I assure you, Mr. Stryker, there is absolutely nothing in him that needs 'curing.'_

Stryker had pressed Charles to reconsider. When Charles had refused – when Charles had been hovering on the edge of a flagrant breach of ethics and _ordering_ the man out of his office – he had asked for a referral to "an actual fucking expert who can get these batshit notions out of my son's head. He can't read minds, and I'll smash your smug fag face in if you keep telling me he can."

Jason had huddled in his chair, shrinking into a small knot of preteen arms and legs as far from his father as he could get. Hallucinations flickered around the edge of Charles's awareness – they were weak, dissociated, signs Jason had begun to lose control – and quickly Charles set a gentle block in the corner of Jason's mind that allowed his ability to manifest.

At that point he had set out Stryker's options: stay and allow him to perform the intake evaluation, acknowledge that Jason was a mutant and in need of help to control his abilities and leave to find another therapist who might suit him better, or leave _now_ , without Jason, whereupon Charles would call CPS.

MCPS had been an empty threat, a bluff balanced against his fear for Jason. Mutants did terribly even in the segregated group housing the state had set up to accommodate them; psionics did the worst out of all of them, with their raw, awkward powers already stretched to the breaking point by their own stress and the added _fearangerconfusiondesolationpleasesomeonehelpme_ cacophony of the other kids. It had been late in the day, and the logistics of getting Jason placed in a foster home in the slender network of mutant-only foster parents he knew…

 _Jason_ , he'd asked the boy, smiling gently when Jason's head jerked up, his dark-shadowed eyes fixing on Charles. _I need to know what you want._

Jason had wanted to go home. They all did. Stryker had calmed, appeased by what he saw as his son's declaration of loyalty to him over and above the ( _interferinghomosexualfuckingmutantfuckingfancyaccentscum_ ) doctor. A few minutes later, they had left.

He had tagged Jason mentally for the next few days as Stryker searched for clinics that would cure kids of their mutations. Charles had, without a trace of regret, blinded him on the few occasions he had thought to call one or walk by one, and called MCPS in the city and back in Washington D.C. to visit the Strykers to determine the boy was safe. The MCPS investigation had turned up a neat suburban home, Jason's room papered with posters of rock bands and video game characters, and a mother with a host of apologies for her husband's behavior and the conviction that he would realized Jason was just fine.

_I never once looked for any information on Jason Stryker. After my accident I was preoccupied. With my enforced isolation from the trial, other than giving my testimony, I had little information about him and every reason not to seek it out, given the extent to which my telepathy had already – in the eyes of many – compromised the trial's impartiality. Maybe I'm too afraid to know what became of him._

Charles set the diary aside and pulled his laptop closer to the edge of the desk. His injury had, at least, given him an excuse to purchase a new, ludicrously expensive office chair, the kind with so much technology it would probably be sent on the first manned mission to Mars. _And why, Xavier, are you thinking about your damn chair, do you imagine?_

He typed _Jason Stryker_ into the search bar with shaking fingers.

_Son of suspect in attempted-murder case missing._

_AP – Authorities in Maryland have begun an investigation into the disappearance of Jason Stryker, 12, from his home in a Bethesda suburb, according to sources close to law enforcement. The son of William Stryker, who is in prison on suspicion of the attempted murder of New York City psychiatrist and mutant-rights advocate Charles Francis Xavier, was reported missing by his mother yesterday morning._

_"There is the possibility that the boy's mutant abilities could have given him a significant head start and help him avoid detection by law enforcement," said a source close to the investigation, who spoke under the condition of anonymity due to being unauthorized to speak to the media. When asked if the boy had been kidnapped, the source said that indications pointed to the boy fleeing on his own._

_The missing boy's powers are described as being psionic in nature, and he is capable of inducing convincing hallucinations in those around him. Psionic specialists with the Mid-Atlantic Mutant Advocacy Group have signed on to the case and are traveling to Bethesda to begin the search today._

A few more news items followed and in none of them had Jason been found. Some of them had posited Charles's involvement, but the police had never questioned him – seeing as, Charles saw from the date, he had been in a coma and would not wake up for another six days. Jason had likely fled the second his father had left the house on the journey that would end with a bullet in Charles's back.

No one had told him. If the investigators had come by to ask for his opinion on Jason, he had no memory of it – so, he reasoned, it was unlikely they would have. Circumstances of the case, Charles supposed; with Stryker in jail, they would have been hesitant to further involve a powerful telepath in anything having to do with the man or his family.

Beyond them, not Raven, not Ororo, not Emma… no one had told him, and he had never asked, too involved in his own loss and pain to bother about a boy.

 _I am also angry_ , Charles wrote in his entry for today, _that I failed a boy who needed me, that I knew I had failed him and could not admit it to myself. That others failed him – his own parents, the father who should have loved him, those who should have looked out for him – makes no difference._

A headache had set itself up behind his temples, precisely over the old pressure-point he had touched to focus his telepathy. Rubbing it sent spikes of near-pain across his forehead, terminating just behind his eyes. Underneath it ran the anger again, at himself, Stryker, the mob outside the courthouse, the preposterously _useless_ woman who called herself Jason's mother, _whymewhymewhyme_ and his telepathy _surged_ , reaching out, a wave high and terrible and –

He caught at it, felt it nearly slipping from his grasp, all directionless energy propelled along by the force of his emotion.

 _God_. Charles collapsed back in his fancy leather chair. His head felt full, far too full, his own self bursting at the seams. _God what was that so close._ His right hand quivered where it lay against the armrest, and Charles sank his fingers into the cushion and pressed pressed _pressed_ until his nails left half-moon marks in the leather.

Trading fear for anger hardly seemed a step in the right direction, Charles told himself. He had written the book on finding the necessary balance between competing emotions – the point where the mind could stand and use its will as the fulcrum to leverage its abilities. In therapy it had required a careful sifting through memories and experiences, helping the patient meld them until they found the most perfect place where they could come to their abilities from a place of stability.

Charles had his own copy of the workbook he gave to patients, a few spare copies of _Between Rage and Serenity_ , the popularized version of the much longer scholarly book that got put out in the bookstores. Belief in the ability of mutants and humans to coexist peacefully had fueled his practice, but that strategy – balance, harmony, the middle way – had provided the mechanism to guide it.

_There was never yet philosopher who could endure the toothache patiently._

He would have to ask Erik how he managed it.

* * *

The Iron Flower was open, Darwin in the middle of leading a Pilates class and contorting himself with an ease that made Charles wonder if Darwin had adapted himself into double joints. Angel, standing sentinel over the desk computer, looked up when the bells chimed at Charles's entry.

"Dr. Xavier," she said with her usual smile. "What brings you in here?" _What brings you in here again?_ was what she really wanted to know.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. "Is Erik in, by any chance?"

He was, in a manner of speaking. "His apartment is upstairs, but today is his day off," Angel said. "I can, um, call him down for you?"

Angel's mind flickered as rapidly as her wings, a rapid-fire series of observations, questions, and conclusions that had to do with the likelihood of Erik saying yes or no way in hell ( _no way in hell_ won out until Angel modified the situation to one in which she told Erik right off the bat that Charles Xavier was here to see him), and the likelihood of Erik Lehnsherr having an actual honest-to-god crush that put Angel's first embarrassing celebrity crush to shame (a young man with ludicrous hair, of whom Charles had never heard), and the likelihood of Erik bludgeoning her with the steel paperweight if she asked him about it. Charles shielded himself the moment an evaluation of his personal and physical characteristics came to the forefront, and got only _Good-looking if you like the –_ before Angel's mind fell silent.

While Charles hovered, Angel picked up the phone and dialed. A pause followed, and then Angel muttering about Charles being here to see – "What? You want me to _what_?" Angel's perfectly-sculpted brows shot up to her hairline. "Um, okay. Sure thing, boss."

She hung up the phone and fixed Charles with an expression that was very nearly admiring. "I don't know what's going on, but he said you could go on up." With a tilt of her head, Angel indicated the door in the far wall of the studio, the one by the cubbies – the one, Charles remembered, he'd been sitting nearly in front of and Erik had walked out and very nearly fallen over him.

Mercifully, Darwin didn't look away from his students as Charles edged across the back wall, his voice a comforting drone of instruction. Feeling far more conspicuous than he'd like, Charles tried to hurry in as un-obvious a way as possible and slip silently through the door.

The stairs were narrow and steep, and turned sharply on the last ascent to a landing. The door at the top stood open, and Charles peered into a wide-open studio apartment, a place of ruthlessly clean lines and minimal clutter, and Erik standing in the kitchen, watching him.

It did not take much to be aware that he was in _Erik's space_ , a space separate from the comings-and-goings of the Iron Flower belowstairs. The door, turned on the hinges of Erik's power, swung shut behind him, cutting off the faint music and Darwin's encouragement of his class. Charles wondered, not without a touch of hysteria, if the tingling working up his spine was the injury or the sudden, aching awareness of Erik. He was beautiful, exactly like before, precisely as Charles's imagination had sketched him out in the darkness of his bedroom. 

"Hello, Charles." Erik offered him the smile that Charles was coming to recognize with distressing quickness, soft and more a suggestion than anything else – a curving of the edges of that wide mouth, a crinkling around the eyes, the eyes which lost some of their distance. Charles caught a brief burst of _surpriseaffection_ and self-castigation ( _don'twhyareyouthinkinglikethatstop_ ) before he got his shields back up and felt himself go warm.

"I want to know how you did it," Charles said into the silence.

Erik paced out of the kitchen. He was barefoot, Charles saw, in worn old jeans and disreputable t-shirt. It was… incongruous against the precision that characterized everything Erik did. There wasn't anything superfluous about him, every aspect – body mind soul all of him – honed to a specific purpose. _Even very dedicated mutants had to take a day off every now and then._ That focus still lived in the way Erik moved, laziness on the surface but watchfulness underneath as he curled himself into one of the chairs in the living area and gestured for Charles to take the other.

A chess set took up a side table, the pieces – of course – shaped from metal and set precisely in their ranks and files. Even the board was inlaid with metal, the brushed steel and copper squares matching the pieces arrayed atop them.

"How," Erik said eventually, "did I do what?"

"I…" Charles made himself look away from the chessboard and directly at Erik, absorbing the hard lines of his face, the way he leaned back into his chair. "I am very angry now, but I can't – I nearly broke again today." He fumbled for the words to describe the sensation, the dissolution of his control and then the excruciating awareness of what was about to happen if he didn't assert himself. "I know, my friend, that I'm justified in my anger, but… what do I do with it? How can I balance it? _What_ do I balance it against?"

Erik lost something of his detachment then, unfolding himself and leaning forward in his chair.

"What happened to you?" Charles asked. He wanted to draw closer but, uncertain of his welcome, pressed forward with his thoughts instead.

 _Intellectually I know. I've guided dozens – hundreds – of patients through the process, but I've never had anyone to help me do it._ He dared to add _no friend_ and laced it through with tentative fondness and hope, and a picture of Erik sitting above him, the nameless expression on his face as he gazed down at Charles.

 _You spoke about your own past_ , Charles said. _If you trusted me with it, I would like to know it._

"You could find it out on your own, you know," Erik said, tapping his temple. The smile he wore had lost some of its kindness. "I would have thought academic curiosity would have been the end of all privacy."

"I won't lie and say I wasn't tempted," Charles said, "but I don't go looking where I'm not wanted. It does more harm than good, and I find I don't like it."

"Very reassuring," Erik said dryly. "But…" He sighed, something rueful twisting across his face. "But you have – I know you prefer that these things be spoken out loud, but for now… now you can look." _And_ , Erik added silently, _see that I'm not holding anything back_.

"Are you sure?" Charles said through an abruptly dry throat. "That isn't… it isn't an offer that's made often."

"I'm making it now," Erik snapped. He waved a hand at his temple again. "Get on with it before I change my mind."

Obediently, Charles reached out.

> _He is eight years old when his parents give him up, old enough to resent being talked down to by the adults but frightened and grief-stricken and shocked enough that the social worker seems to become a giant, the words that exile him to a foster home coming from some terrifying height. In those days there'd been no way to care for orphaned or abandoned children with mutations – he will learn this later, and the fury will burn in him like molten steel – so they decide the only thing to do when he, screaming to be let go, to let him go back to Mama and Papa, yanks the door off its frame by its hinges and lock is drug him to insensibility._
> 
> _He comes back to himself in a hospital, surrounded by plastic everything. Plastic bedframe, plastic chairs, plastic plastic everywhere except for the tiny, useless IV needle in his arm that he, still floating, detached from his fledgling ability, can barely feel. The studs and framing under the plaster and drywall are like ghosts._
> 
> _And there is a man sitting next to him._
> 
> _The man is Sebastian Shaw, and he is a mutant. Erik's heart leaps with hope. He asks Mr. Shaw if he can go back home, Mama and Papa are good parents – they are the best, he swears; they love him, even his ability to make metal do whatever he wishes._
> 
> _Oh no, my boy, Mr. Shaw says, I… I am sorry, but they have realized how they cannot care for you. A boy of your talents – they didn't want to see you tied down to a life of utter baseline averageness. (His voice breaks into something ugly and condescending.) After talking with our counselors, they decided it would be in your best interests…_
> 
> _His life blurs – he is Shaw's ward now, because Shaw is a mutant like him. He takes delight in Erik's abilities, his growing mastery of them and the corresponding increase in his power. When the boys at his private school mock him, Erik strikes back, easy as thinking, as the will to revenge._
> 
> _He sees the injustices done against his people on a daily basis. Shaw watches the news with him and scoffs over the roachlike scurrying of the humans to protect what they think is theirs. Soon, Shaw says every night, they'll discover their vaunted security is an illusion because we – we, the heirs, the superior ones – will be in charge. And they will be gone._
> 
> _After those evenings, Erik lies awake in bed and thinks of his parents. As he grows older, the memories fade but lose none of their potency. He looks for them, writes letters to his old address, but the letters come back marked with Return to Sender and the few inquiries he knows how to make come up empty. Shaw says they've moved on: they know their son is in a better place, that he is fulfilling his potential. At nights, in the privacy of his room, Erik wonders what his mother would think of her son fulfilling his potential to destroy the human world._
> 
> _His anger builds and builds. Shaw delights in it, for all that he seems to have no emotions to speak of, other than the calculated superiority that colors his interactions with everyone, even Erik. It grates, when Shaw looks at him as if Erik's a well-trained animal who performs on command – which, of course, Erik does._
> 
> _Erik does perform. He's every inch Shaw's creature – coached, groomed, shaped, all of it – until the day a woman named Doctor Emma Frost comes to their apartment, glittering diamond in the hallway lights and tells him to come with her._


	17. L'heure bleu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The train from Berlin to Zurich runs swiftly – unusual, given how, five years after the war German transportation has not yet fully recovered, but perhaps _not_ unusual with an adaptive powering the gears along. Erik lets the metronome ticking of the great pistons settle into a corner of his awareness along with the heat of the fire in the engine's heart and attempts to settle himself in the richly plush chair of the first-class saloon and concentrate on his letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A companion to one of the ficlets from earlier in Thirty days, [Billets-doux](http://archiveofourown.org/works/482151/chapters/842450). Cesare commented on it earlier today and then I got it into my head to write about Erik writing one of his letters. This is set two days or so after that fic.
> 
> Pairings: Charles/Erik  
> Warnings: Explicit sex  
> Advertisements: historical AU, still have powers, dirty sexy letters, masturbation, light/implied bondage/domination, language kink

**L'heure bleu**

The train from Berlin to Zurich runs swiftly – unusual, given how, five years after the war German transportation has not yet fully recovered, but perhaps _not_ unusual with an adaptive powering the gears along. Erik lets the metronome ticking of the great pistons settle into a corner of his awareness along with the heat of the fire in the engine's heart and attempts to settle himself in the richly plush chair of the first-class saloon and concentrate on his letter. 

> _My darling,_
> 
> _This letter will find you before I do; it will know your touch – the touch of your fingers, your lips – before I can do so much as claim a handshake from you. My jealousy of it is nearly enough to persuade me not to send it… but then you would castigate me for failing to correspond with you regularly. On second thought, perhaps I should not send it after all, for the punishment you inflict is sweet._

The pen with which he writes is pure gold chased in silver, and the ink in its secure well by his elbow, Erik is fairly certain it must have been made from the gods' ichor. The pen is only one of the lesser signs of wealth in this carriage: the richly paneled wood, the chandeliers chiming softly as the train rocks back and forth along its tracks, the few men and women who have lingered after breakfast to talk – Erik has never been particularly passionate about gold and silver (they don't sing to him, not the way iron does), but the richness of metal tumbling on a lady's breast, a fine-tuned pocketwatch warming in the waistcoat of the man talking to her have their own seduction.

> _My trip so far has been productive in a few respects. Across the country workers have been striking – there is too much uncertainty now, with the burden of war reparations hanging over the state and the ruling classes made impotent by fear and the disastrous foolishness that the Republic has inherited from its imperial predecessors. The trick will be managing the chaos and guiding it in the proper direction; namely, away from whatever golden yesterday it is where Odin and Bismarck ruled the world. Already there are reports of the Nationalsozialist party agitating, with the old government fallen and the new one still uncertain. There are dozens of other parties competing with them – who is the most bloody, who is the most devoted to the great Germany of the past, who is the most fucking illogical blockhead that can persuade the most blockheads to follow him into nostalgia._

He is, of course, the cuckoo in this gilded nest. Erik smiles, pleased enough with himself to show it, even if it means the fine lady blushing and looking away, and the mustached man next to her glaring at Erik for his impropriety. It could be a second adaptation, very nearly – not at the same level as Charles's sister, of course, but he has ridden this same train in the sardine tin of fourth class, his arse going numb on the uncushioned slatted benches while he listened to babies shrieking and breathed in the smell of too many bodies pressed too close together. And now – queer, adaptive, Jew – he rides it in one of the fine dark gray suits Charles had picked out for him, a silver pin placed just _so_ in the deep blue of his tie, writing a letter to his lover with a Cartier pen.

> _It is only a few days before I see you again. My business in Zurich will be concluded in one day, two at the most, and then I will board a train back west to the heart of the world, to where you are._
> 
> _I wonder if you have received the last letter I sent, the one from the rainy night in Berlin. I'm hard, thinking about you lying in our bed, reading those first lines and gasping so prettily. You touched yourself, I know it and I don't need your telepathy to know it; you touched yourself and wished it was my hand upon you._

Erik sighs and drops a discreet hand down to his lap to press against his cock. Charles is like opium, like cocaine, like absinthe in the blood; he is heady, dangerous in the way he works himself into the soul's very fabric. Over a week gone from him Erik finds his thoughts turning to Charles more often, imagining the two of them planning the future in the aftermath of one of their sessions in their tiny bed, the talk turning into fighting and the fighting turning into Charles's mouth coaxing his prick to life again or Erik licking into the sweaty, sleek declivity of Charles's arse – or so many other things, really, that make Erik stroke once, the flat of his palm hard against his cock to sigh and shiver with pleasure.

> _As I write this, the woman sitting three tables away is reading a book. It's Rilke, who writes so movingly of the perfection of the love of the soul and the body. Perhaps she is reading the one beginning with_ Einmal nahm ich zwischen meine Hände dein Gesicht. Der Mond fiel darauf ein. _I have done that many times, when it is just the two of us, with you above me and our lamp off to help cool the summer evening, so the only light on you is that of the moon rising over the city and I find I want to touch that light and feel your warmth beneath it. I wonder what that lady would say if I told her I knew a boy like the Greek statue in Rilke's famous poem –_ Aber sein Torso glüht wie ein Kandelaber _("his body yet shines like a pillar of flame") – that I had made love to him, that I had opened him with my fingers and plowed that lovely arse of his._
> 
> _You must know what it is you do to me; you're a telepath, you must know how I sit here, wretched, wanting nothing more than to fly to Paris to take you in my arms and take apart the prim and proper lines of you. I know what you are underneath, when you suck my cock with those greedy little sounds and that whorish, hungry look in your eyes – it is as if, when we are apart you regenerate and become perfect once more, and so when I see you again my only thought is of what I could do to ruin you again._

Of course, Charles is _his_ ruin, Erik knows. He's known it from the moment Charles fished him out of the Seine and pulled him into that truly ridiculous rowboat.

At the time Erik had been too furious at Schmidt escaping him, had given serious thought to demolishing the Pont Saint-Louis to bring it down on Schmidt's head, but then a ringing command to calm himself had jarred him out of his fury and into disbelief because that command had been spoken _in his head_. And poets would laugh to know that Erik had stared blindly up at the boy who had saved him, taken in his dripping chestnut hair and clothes river-stained beyond hope of repair, watched as the boy licked the river from his smiling lips – and had known that this would be the world for him.

He picks up the letter – his hand, Erik is proud to note, does not shake – and the pen and now-stoppered bottle of ink. The woman is still engrossed in her Rilke, her companion snoring at her elbow. Closer now, Erik sees the faintest edges of wear in their corners – her silver battered, his collar worn in the crease. They're much like the train they ride in, one of the few outposts of luxury in a country torn by the war it had brought on itself.

Charles's money has bought him a private compartment, a luxury he rarely affords himself; still, the trip from Berlin to Zurich is long, and the day is already drawing down with the train – after an irritating series of delays that had provoked Erik into speeding things along – still two hours outside its destination. With the train under the influence of Erik's power, the scenery gallops by, mountains and fields cloaked in late evening. His window looks west, where fire runs along the lip of the cliffs and haloing them in gold; above them, the sky runs the spectrum from the palest, crystalline blue to midnight velvet in the east. Inside his compartment with the lights on, everything is gold, from the brass fittings to the honey-toned wood.

Erik pulls off his jacket and tie and waistcoat, pulls out cufflinks and undoes buttons so he can pull off the starched impediment of his shirt. At some point, an attendant had come by to close the windows against the coming chill, and maybe to gawk at the suitcase stowed in its rack, with its locks melted shut. The bit of cool air that comes through the windows is enough to settle pleasantly against his skin. A small writing desk pulls up to the bed; he places the letter, pen, and inkwell on it and, after a moment's thought, begins to write again. 

> _You can say what you want, beloved: I'm still the poor Jewish boy who grew up on the wrong side of Düsseldorf. Like Raven I can take on appearances – but the reality remains stubbornly different._
> 
> _Do you remember the first time we fucked? Of course you do, but I shall tell you the story anyway._
> 
> _It was after a salon. We had gone to see your dear Lady Mary Crawley give a reading from one of her books. You were splendid – the tailor must have had his hands all over you to shape fabric to you like that. I wore the only suit I had – a suit I bought to better melt into the circles Schmidt frequented – and under it I itched and burned for want of you. All I could think of during the reading and the discussion was how I ached to have you, and how I could have you – for have you I would – and then, at the end, you turned to me with those burning eyes of yours and said that we should leave._

The bed in his compartment is small and not particularly comfortable, but those things are easy to ignore as Erik eases back. His cock still aches, neglected as it is, after too long sitting in that wretched saloon, torturing himself. Getting his hand on it makes him twitch and moan, shifting his hips upward to chase after sensation. When he shuts his eyes, he can imagine Charles there, his long, capable fingers stroking Erik's length, that lovely King's English voice murmuring filthy, awed endearments, _I love how big you are, love how it feels when you first push into me – I can show you, if you want, what it's like when you're fucking me up the arse with your big, hard cock and you're so far gone you don't know what you're doing to me._

And there would be more, maybe that pretty mouth stretched around him to take him in, and that clever tongue – the same one that had recited schoolboy Cicero to a circle of admirers – or was it Cato or Catullus? – earlier that day. Erik had had to drag him off, overcome with heat, and pushed him into an alley and Charles had dropped to his knees, heedless of the danger and Erik had been blind to everything except getting Charles's mouth on him.

 _Catullus, my love_ , Charles had said while Erik was incoherently wondering, face buried in the hot crease of Erik's groin. _Surripui tibi, dum ludis, mellite Iuuenti, suauiolum dulci dulcius ambrosia – a sweet little kiss stolen from a sweet young man_ and licked a meaningful stripe up the length of Erik's cock. 

Of course, Erik had never stolen a kiss from Charles; Charles had given him everything willingly, and that's maybe what's most amazing about all of this: that Charles is inexhaustible.

Erik strokes himself hard and fast, merciless with it where Charles prefers to be cruel by dragging it out, teasing Erik with light glances of his tongue, holding himself just out of Erik's reach so Erik can't press bruises and adoration into the subtle strength of muscle and skin and waiting until Erik is mad with it to let the two of them join together. Pleasure burns fierce as it always does, lighting Erik up in a wave like electric lights coming on, racing up his spine and igniting under his ribcage and behind his eyes. 

He comes on a gasp, sudden and hard and messy all over his hand. His heart rackets in his ears and his breath doesn't quite want to work for a moment before he comes back to himself, spent and still aching. 

The letter waits on its desk, the ink from earlier now dried. Erik doesn't bother to clean his hand before picking up the pen and, after another breath to compose himself, picking up where he left off. His own come drips on the page to mix with the ink.

> _I just stroked myself off, thinking of you, my love. I suppose, when poets write of two souls being knit together, they intend it to signify the highest, purest passion, the sort that ennobles both partners and brings them closer to some mystical understanding that, for the spiritually-inclined, is like the union with G-d, or whatever nonsense it is they write about._
> 
> _So I wonder what they would say that the two of us are knit together –but our passion is made of blood and sweat and come, and our bodies twined together in the perfect, unapologetic embrace of flesh._
> 
> _Here is what I was thinking of doing to you, beloved, when I return five days hence. First, do not look to be let out of bed for at least a day. Second, do you know how beautiful you would look with the metal bedstead twined around your wrists? Answer: Very, for they would be nothing so crude as simple manacles, but I would shape them into the most beautiful things my power can invent. And then I will torture you, my love, with kisses and bites – I will devour you, I will take you apart and you will be mine again…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poems in question are:
> 
> -Rainier Maria Rilke, "Einmal nahm ich zwischen meine Hände dein Gesicht" (Once I clasped your face between my hands) and "Archaïscher Torso Apollos" (The archaic torso of Apollo)
> 
> -Catullus 99 (which Charles would not have read in school--at least, not officially)


	18. Kaleidoscope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Erik asked Charles to explain about his telepathy, he braced himself for one of Charles’s ridiculously long-winded scientific rambles. (And if Erik secretly enjoyed watching Charles gesture and enthuse his way through his dissertation, well, Erik could appreciate passion and drive without it meaning he was attracted to Charles in the least.) Maybe it was the day, high and clear and strangely lazy despite everything, the sun gilding Charles’s edges and his enthusiasm lighting him up all over, or maybe he was feeling generous, or maybe he was learning (despite himself) to trust, Erik had no idea, but just as Charles drew breath to launch into his explanation, Erik broke in and said "No, wait, show me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason today I felt like dragging out my CS4 and doing what passes for art in my world. It's the first thing I've done in over a year. I put the art together first, and then wrote this little snippet.
> 
> Credits: textures by nivani, keio-chan, and newkidfan; font by me
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles (of course!)  
> Warnings: None as such  
> Advertisements: artfic, canon, first kiss, telepathy

  


When Erik asked Charles to explain about his telepathy, he braced himself for one of Charles’s ridiculously long-winded scientific rambles. (And if Erik secretly enjoyed watching Charles gesture and enthuse his way through his dissertation, well, Erik could appreciate passion and drive without it meaning he was attracted to Charles in the least.) Maybe it was the day, high and clear and strangely lazy despite everything, the sun gilding Charles’s edges and his enthusiasm lighting him up all over, or maybe he was feeling generous, or maybe he was learning (despite himself) to trust, Erik had no idea, but just as Charles drew breath to launch into his explanation, Erik broke in and said "No, wait, show me.” 

Charles stared at him.

"Please,” Erik said.

This far out in the country, the city only hummed faintly in the back of Erik's mind – and it said something, he knew, that he didn't need to dredge up his anger to hear metal anymore. He tugged at a pen Charles had tucked in the breast pocket of his shirt, mostly to see Charles's pensive expression fall away in favor of the bright smile he wore whenever Erik exercised his ability. When he stopped, though, Charles's happiness fell away like the sun going out.

"It's not really something I can _show_ you," Charles said doubtfully and, for the first time in Erik's recollection, hesitantly. "But I think I could possibly –" he paused to eye Erik as if suspecting him of duplicity, " – if you don't mind?"

"I don't," Erik said, and leaned forward.

It begins slowly, the warmth of his own body under his sweater fading, replaced by a soft shirt with a collar that tickles his neck. The sun lies gently on his face, although he has to half-shut his eyes against it and try to dismiss the faint, itchy worry about sunburn and freckling. He is _loose_ , content to be still and sit here on a magnificent early fall day with the mansion and its old nightmares drowsing beyond the hill and a breeze flickering in and out of the orchards. He shifts a little, where his body has flattened the grass and his hip has started to go numb.

When he stretches his mind out, he brushes against Erik's _focusedsteeldeterminationwonder_ , a steady pulse like a magnetic field that slowly draws him in; Raven _invisiblelikeoilskimmingwater_ and his heart aches with an ache he's used to; Alex and Sean bickering over something in the game room while Hank watches and turns over his latest experiments, _trythatoneagainwithnewvariablestheanswer'sthereIknowit_ , and then – then he is beyond the walls of the estate, arcing up over them like a bird and everywhere he alights is a mind, many identical until he looks in more closely and then – then he runs a finger across the unique texture, listens to the peculiar sounds like symphonies on a million different instruments, collages made of thought-memory-purpose-emotion-sense-past-present-future as the mind anticipates and recalls and processes. He is a ghost in the city, haunting society ladies and executives and the bored cabby waiting for his secretary girlfriend and he is the farmer and an exhausted young man in a Beetle pushing across the narrow strip of Pennsylvania that divides New York from Ohio, and he is a young man brimming with power and promise, his mind a kaleidoscope of the world, all the tesserae of it turning around a still, small point at the very center.

And in that point he is _everything_.

He is a boy poring over science books, sounding out the words while strong hands hold him steady in a man's lap, he is that same boy standing over a closed coffin trying desperately to shield himself from grief, he is that boy – a little older now – creeping into the kitchen with a baseball bat at the ready and finding not his mother but a little girl, blue-skinned and magnificent and alone, and _shift_ he is a young man immersing himself in college and girls (and occasionally a few boys) and coming into the full promise of his gift, weaving effortlessly in and out of minds and plucking secrets from them like flowers, he is giving a presentation to a crowded room and almost does not recognize his own voice it's so filled with passion as he explains his theories on evolution and change and what the future holds, as he wishes he could show them what he and his sister can truly do, how the future is here and _shift_ he is in a bar with the world blurry around him listening to a woman tell him all his dreams have come true and he is almost shocked out of himself at the cold cold water and his lungs are crying out for air but he gets his arms around the man in the water and _pulls_ –

– _shift_ they are home again in the place that never felt like home before but may start to if all his dreams come true, and he is walking through the hallways looking for Erik, drawn along by the attraction that binds them both but still has them circling like two stars caught in orbit around each other. He knows Erik had been out working with Hank, trying to persuade the boy into _some_ demonstration of his ability that has more to do with confrontation and less with running away but succeeding only in terrifying Hank back into the labs. Whatever Hank's equivalent of falling off a satellite dish is, Charles hopes he finds it soon.

Eventually he cheats enough to catch the dark edges of Erik's thoughts. They're a little lighter than usual, as if Erik is permitting himself happiness that doesn't have to do with the long road to avenging his family. There's a carelessness about it, Erik satisfied with himself in a way he rarely is, the ache of muscles well-used and the promise of a shower after a day spent out under the sun, exercising his abilities the way he was meant to do.

Charles is so caught up in turning over Erik's thoughts – which aren't _thoughts_ precisely so much as raw emotion, an animal pleasure in movement and sensation and the brain already looking forward to the cool embrace of water – that he turns the corner to the swimming pool changing room just in time to catch an eyeful of Erik as he pulls his trousers down to exchange them for the swim shorts puddled on the bench.

Turning right back around does nothing, eidetic memory being what it is. The cool old stone of the mansion basement heats beneath him as he presses himself back along the wall and tries to will away the vision of Erik's pale skin, the precisely articulated line of his shoulders and the mathematical curve of his chest running down to his flat, narrow belly and the hips Charles aches to touch. He imagines his fingers curving around them, investigating the weave of muscle and the subtle dip of Erik's lower back and the two indentations on either side of his spine ( _fossae lumbales laterales_ , he thinks hysterically; that is the proper medical term), and it's only the thought that he's embarrassingly hard and any second now Erik will be striding out of that door and _see him_ like that that propels him away from his hiding place and, swiftly, silently, back up the hallway to his bedroom.

Once there he shuts the door behind him and does his level best not to let his mind wander back down to join Erik. He can project himself if he wants; he could watch Erik swim as if he were in the pool with him, or he could ride along – blank himself to Erik's thoughts but simply appreciate the competence of a well-trained body slicing through the water and imagine Erik suspended above him, dripping wet, chest heaving, leaning down to press a sweet, damp kiss to his mouth –

 _shift_ and back into himself again. He was Erik, Erik Lehnsherr, sitting on one of the immense lawns of Charles's estate, staring at the man across from him.

"—truly am sorry," Charles was saying, clearly in the middle of an apology Erik had missed while trying to get his feet under him again. The red on his face had little to do with the sun. Sitting this close, Erik could see the freckles on Charles's nose dissolve into the blush even as Charles fought for the calm superiority that never seemed to desert him. "That was – ah, well."

"What was it, Charles?" Erik hitched himself closer, close enough to see the variegated blue of Charles's eyes, which were wide with shock and mortification.

"That was my telepathy," Charles muttered. "Erik, truly, I am _so_ – I would never dream of – what you saw was _not_ something I would ever – "

"Why," Erik began, and it had to be the day that made him reckless; there was no other excuse ( _but you saw, you saw how he felt about you, and you're admitting it to yourself whether you know it or not_ ) for him sliding his hand over Charles's, teasing a thumb across the soft old material of Charles's gloves.

"Why," Erik said, close enough now to taste Charles's breath and read the wonder in his eyes, "don't you tell me about the rest of that dream you had, hm?"

Something knowing – something far more _Charles_ – lit those blue eyes.

"I could show you instead," Charles offered.

"Then do that," Erik said, and let Charles press their mouths together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next week might be a little uneven with updates; although I will be writing something every day, I'm not entirely sure when I'll be able to post new chapters and things to AO3. This is because I am moving out to Le New Place, and horror of horrors I won't have the internets at my apartment until next Tuesday.


	19. A yoga fic [6]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There's a situation," the woman named Emma Frost says. In her diamond form she moves as smoothly as flesh; there's nothing for Erik to grab hold of – he has a feeling he would cut his hand on her if he tried, and she sends him an approving hum of a thought to confirm his suspicions. "From what I was able to get from the agent on the scene, you're Max Shaw, correct? Sebastian Shaw's next of kin."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter you've been waiting for. Um, even if you didn't know you were waiting for it.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Emma, Raven, Steve Rogers  
>  Warnings: PTSD, violence (referenced and described), emotional/physical trauma and recovery, abduction, implied emotional abuse/manipulation  
> Advertisements: THE BIG REVEAL

**Chapter six**

Surprise snapped Charles back into himself, so abruptly it was as if he were inhaling his consciousness back into his body along with a sudden, sharp breath.

"You know her – Emma Frost," he said, even as he thought _she had mentioned she knew him_ and replayed the conversation: a friend of Steve's, she'd said – the truth, of course, but not the _full_ truth.

Erik was watching him closely, still folded in on himself, a relaxed alertness keeping his body poised. "I do know Emma," he said at last, "but not well. We've only spoken a handful of times, and not in several years." Erik's mouth thinned. "Are you going to get on with it? Or are we going to talk about Emma now?"

He needed a moment to collect his telepathy enough, gathering it into focus again, and then reached for that dark and twisted corner of Erik's mind.

> "There's a situation," the woman named Emma Frost says. In her diamond form she moves as smoothly as flesh; there's nothing for Erik to grab hold of – he has a feeling he would cut his hand on her if he tried, and she sends him an approving hum of a thought to confirm his suspicions. "From what I was able to get from the agent on the scene, you're Max Shaw, correct? Sebastian Shaw's next of kin." 
> 
> "I am." He's twenty-two now, a decade removed from the frightened boy learning his parents had given him up – the boy who had slowly, painfully resigned himself to Sebastian's cold affection – but that boy has been sleeping in him all along, and he's waking now. "What's going on? What's happened to Sebastian?"
> 
> Dr. Frost 's crystalline eyes are chilling. "If I tell you, you're not going to tear the building apart, are you? Because that would get you thrown in prison as a co-conspirator."
> 
> She forces her explanation through Erik's disbelief, and is not above threatening to knock him out when she senses him reaching for a taxi, intending to crush the life out of it. She is a senior resident at St. Nathaniel's, a facility specializing in mutant research and medicine. Most of the mutants there are young, short-term stays, dealing with side-effects from their first manifestations, or there for specialized care human hospitals can't provide. But they also have a psychiatric unit – specifically an outpatient unit – specifically a unit with once-weekly group therapy sessions – specifically sessions that Sebastian Shaw, as a condition of his parole, had been ordered to attend.
> 
> (They'd been at a mutant rights rally, Shaw agitating for a more forceful response to human bigotry. The mutants there had backed away quickly when the police showed up, too afraid of themselves to trust in the superiority their powers grant them. Shaw had allowed himself to be arrested even though he could have broken the cuffs without any effort at all; he had pled guilty to disturbing the peace and incitement because, he'd said when he'd sauntered out of the courtroom to meet Erik, there was no point in saying otherwise.
> 
> "We must always be honest with ourselves, Max. We are what we are." He'd offered Erik his thin smile, the one that was all teeth and no joy. "And what we are is superior.")
> 
> "I know about this," Erik snaps. They're in a car now, the paint job an anonymous navy, the windows tinted. In front of them, a dark-suited driver pilots the car through the crush of the city. "Are you going to tell me why I'm here and what's happening with Sebastian, or will I have to make you?" The metal from the car is singing to him, the rich vibrato that comes when his anger allows him to tap into the vast reserves of his ability.
> 
> "Sugar, your… _foster father_ ," Dr. Frost invests the words with dimensions of sarcasm, "is currently in a very private room in St. Nate's for threatening to blow up the financial district." Erik is _reaching_ for her with the metal in the door – he's snapped off the interior mechanisms, forcing them through the plastic, when she says, "I put him there, _Erik Lehnsherr."_
> 
> The use of his name – his true name, the one he's never been able to make himself give up despite having had Sebastian's for so long – brings him up short. Dr. Frost glares at him and says something to the driver, who's pulled over and has pulled his completely useless gun on Erik.
> 
> "Put the piece away and drive," Dr. Frost snaps. The driver automatically slides the gun back into the holster under his arm, turns back to the wheel, and puts the car into drive. Dr. Frost tugs the window mechanism off from around her neck and drops it on the seat beside her.
> 
> "I have every right to do it, and the obligation to do it," Dr. Frost says. It's meanly thrilling to watch her touch her neck carefully, where the steel has cracked its faceted perfection. "I was the resident in charge of that wretched excuse of a therapy session. Even if he'd been wearing one of those helmets, I would have been able to read him easily: he never intended to integrate or accept the fact that, short of nuclear war, humans aren't going anywhere and that, while he may survive, he wouldn't have things like air conditioning or edible food. He's been planning this, hoarding the energy for it." She taps a finger against her lips, diamond on diamond. "I don't suppose it's too much to ask if you knew anything about this."
> 
> "No," Erik says, which is the truth.
> 
> "Honey," Dr. Frost looks at him pityingly. The car slows for traffic; Erik absently pushes the cars out of the way and never mind that breaks laws that could have him in St. Nate's next to Sebastian.
> 
> _You don't know much about anything, do you?_

"He was the one," Charles muttered. He stared at the chess board without really seeing it. "Sebastian Shaw – the one patient she committed. He's in prison now." 

Emma had never discussed the case; it had been before their time together, and while he'd known she'd been at St. Nathaniel's, he had never connected her with one of the most infamous cases the hospital had ever seen. Every mutant in the nation – probably the world – had known about it, although he had been in Boston, buried in both his own residency and the research for his book, and the story of Sebastian Shaw had smacked of comic book villainy.

Charles remembered nothing of a boy – or maybe, only vaguely, maybe only through the bits of memories gathered about the memory of that first conversation with Emma: Erik had avoided reporters; his testimony in court and the lack of evidence against him – beyond being a mutant rights supporter (which, in some eyes, would be more than enough to throw him into prison alongside Shaw) – meant his role in the case had been minimal.

"Attempted murder and attempted homicide, terroristic threats." He could see the _Boston Globe_ headline clear as day, feel Moira hovering over his shoulder, reading along. Shaw's plan, apparently, had been to destroy the United Nations and, subsequently, the Russian Embassy in order to restart the Cold War.

Erik nodded curtly but said nothing when Charles transmitted that image to him. He'd curled in on himself as Charles had read him – not defensive, Charles sensed (Erik had been willing, in his uniquely stubborn way, for Charles to look at his memories), but tense. _Angry_ , in the way Charles's patients were angry ( _in the way you've been angry_ , he reminded himself), body cupped around it in to keep the fire sheltered and burning. As Charles watched, though, the flame-sharp edges of it softened and smoothed, until Erik straightened and regarded him calmly.

"That day isn't the point of this," Erik said. "It's what I discovered during the course of his trial. Emma discovered it – it was never made part of the official record in his case, because the circumstances of the discovery were not," his mouth twisted bitterly, "considered constitutional, or pertinent to the terror investigation. So it was agreed by all parties that Shaw would spend the rest of his life in jail, and I would have no justice, and that would be that."

Rather than look back into Erik's past again, Charles turned over the memories he'd uncovered, examining them minutely like a jeweler through his loupe.

Memories had layers to them, levels of sediment built and built upon them through the years. At the base was the memory itself as the mind perceived it in the moment of its creation ( _his ten-year-old self and Raven playing hide-and-seek, the thrill of trying to find her himself and his heart pumping as he runs on gangly legs to catch her_ ), and then atop it the associations attached to it as the self aged ( _himself a teenager too busy with books to indulge her sometimes and then himself even older and Raven dismissing games as childish_ ) and then finally the mind recalling that memory in the present moment ( _fond regret for those lost days, wishing they could get back to those times_ ).

The memories of Shaw had anger laced over them like gasoline, ready to be set alight. And it was not, Charles realized on examining the patterns of it, anger at what had been done to Shaw, but at Shaw _himself_. Not for leaving Erik to a lonely crusade – a crusade which, Charles thought with relief, he had since abandoned – but for a betrayal so deep Charles backed away from it the moment he perceived it, fearing he would fall in and in and down and never come up again.

"He kidnapped me," Erik said flatly. "The social worker was another mutant – not a powerful one – he'd recruited to help him _select_ children in human families who he felt would benefit from being raised by a mutant. He found, and was successful with, only me. My parents were poor; they couldn't persuade the police to investigate, and when the police learned I was a mutant… Well."

> He learns from Dr. Frost that they both died in a car accident two years after his disappearance. That day is the worst day of his life, holding the computer printout of a small article recording their deaths, sitting in Dr. Frost's office at St. Nathaniel's. He is a footnote to the story, an extra helping of tragedy to make the story of an obscure, poor metalworker and his immigrant wife more heartwrenching. 
> 
> "Neighbors who knew the couple told reporters that the Lehnsherrs never stopped looking for their son," reads the article. "So far, no solid leads have been found concerning the disappearance of Erik Lehnsherr, who was eight at the time police say he was taken from his home."
> 
> A picture of his eight-year-old self, a low-resolution image, gazes blurrily up at him. Underneath it the caption says "From one of the flyers Mr. and Mrs. Lehnsherr put up soliciting information on the disappearance of their son."

Charles _was_ Erik, sitting in the chair across from Dr. Frost, the paper crinkling and tearing in his fingers, every scrap of metal in the room – in the walls – in the _building_ humming as he gripped it tight. _Destroy destroy destroy_ he thought, because that was the only way, the only outlet for the fury rising up in him that would consume him from the inside out. Charles couldn't breathe for the constriction in his chest. 

"I hate Shaw," Erik told him. "I hate him. There isn't a day that goes by when I wish I could find him wherever the government stashed him and _end_ him. There are dreams I've had," and those same dreams had covered over his memories of Shaw like spider webs – invisible at first, but now they stuck to Charles, orgies of blood and iron, "where I imagine precisely what I would do to him, and it _kills_ me that I can't take from him what he took from me."

_I would stand over Stryker's bed in that little cell he thinks he's king over, and I would parade every nightmare of his before his eyes. I would pull his mind apart neuron by neuron._ Charles shook his head, nearly giddy with the rush of satisfaction. _I would make him believe his son is safe and happy and proud of his what he can do, just to watch the bile well up in his throat._

"But I agreed with him," Erik continued. "I still do."

"What," Charles said, startled out of his imaginings, "that the financial district should be blown up to demonstrate mutant superiority?" Good _god_. He hadn't suspected that Erik would have been brainwashed, but he'd seen people even with Erik's strength of will left powerless to skillfully placed suggestion.

"Clearly not." Erik rolled his eyes at Charles. "I agree with him that humans as a group have no interest in tolerance or integration. I've seen enough evidence of that – and I know you have too, so _don't_ lecture me, Charles – to tell me Shaw is correct. Our parents may love us, our friends may love us," _if we have them_ , "but as a whole? As a _herd_?" Erik shook his head. "We're going to have to outwait them, either until there are too many of us to be ignored and shoved to the margins, or until they destroy themselves and make way for us. Until then, we play the long game: pushing back when we're pushed, fighting to make ourselves stronger and proud of what we are."

So that was the source of Erik's conviction, the fierce protectiveness that shored up the Iron Flower as if it had been built into the very stones of the place. Charles turned the memories over again and brushed his mental fingers against another layer, as if gathering pollen : that resolve was interwoven with the anger, Erik's decision _never again never again will this happen to any child, not like me – ignored because of what I was – only having a kidnapper to rely on for any sense of worth. Never never never._

"And," Charles said with a dryness he didn't really feel, "you decided to start a yoga studio."

"So I did," Erik said, the curl of his mouth saying he'd gotten Charles's humor. "I was very angry for years. Shaw had known my anger and used it; it was the key, he said, to the lockbox of my gift. Rage and pain and fear – those were what I needed to become powerful. But without him, without having any idea where he'd been taken, I had… nothing."

> He spends three years in his silent, isolated rage. The government has seized all of Shaw's assets. With the abduction case thrown out on the technicality of Emma being psychic and the case law still uncertain about what to make of telepathically-obtained testimony, he has no standing to claim that property – just as he has no standing to claim anything that his parents had left for him, at least until he is able to scrape together proof that Max Shaw and Erik Lehnsherr are one and the same.
> 
> His parents' property, such as it is, has been sitting quietly, held under orders from a judge who – Erik can't think of this without his habitual bitterness – had decided that the lack of investigation into a child's disappearance merited the withholding of a death certificate. "Miracles do happen," that same judge had said to him following the probate of his parents' wills, but Erik, too accustomed to anger, had ignored her.
> 
> He has money now, but no direction still, nothing more than petty crimes to blow off steam, hovering on the knife-edge of violence. Sometimes he considers pulling down the bridges, or the Empire State Building – he could do it; he's fairly certain that meditating on Shaw would provide him with more than enough fuel to fan the flames – because then he could end up in the place where they warehouse the truly dangerous mutants, the ones who refuse to be tamed to humanity's liking, and there he could find Shaw and kill him.
> 
> Those nights are the worst. Those are the nights he roams the streets, flexing his power around all the metal he can find, and looks for fights to pick.
> 
> Sometimes on those nights there are cells, pockets of mutant agitators who look on him like he's also the heir to Shaw's power. The thought that they see Shaw when they look at him turns his stomach. But the other side of the coin – the mutants who cower and cringe and take the experimental treatments to make themselves baseline – nauseates him as much. Surely, he thinks one night after he'd lurked on the fringes of a radical mutant meeting, listening to the rhetoric – overblown like Shaw's – and the plans – ridiculously grandiose like Shaw's – there must be _something_ other than the rage that is his constant companion.
> 
> On one day following one of those nights he is walking through the Bronx, a small neighborhood that plays host to an enclave of mutants. He is twenty-five, three years after Shaw, drifting through small groups of mutants clustered around mutant-friendly storefronts, all of them chattering and laughing, and even among his own kind he feels terribly alone. He wants to ask them if they know, if they _really_ know what the world is like outside this haven of theirs, because if they did, they wouldn't be laughing.
> 
> On impulse, he ducks into a bookshop. Not that he really has the money to spend, but sometimes going without is worth it to help a fellow mutant by buying their questionable prose – and, he admits, it's worth it to surround himself, however temporarily, with the reminder that their community is growing, that this place would not have been here a decade ago. Its owners would not have dreamed it, but it's here now, fiction and history and a few books on being mutant and Jewish or mutant and black or mutant and female. Annoyingly, though, there is a rather large section devoted to soothing mutants back into line or helping them subdue their abilities so their families will accept them. He's stalking by them, ignoring them out of hand, when the title of one catches his eye.
> 
> It's a self-help book, he can tell that immediately, pap fed to mutants who need to be eased into the acceptance of their ability because the human world has poisoned them with fear. He stops to glare at it.
> 
> _Between Rage and Serenity: The Emotional Life of Mutation_ , by Charles F. Xavier, Ph.D.
> 
> He hates it on sight, and he hates the reviews – glowing, of course; probably the reviewers hadn't even read it – even more. The blurb on the back cover makes him twitch: 'Even though psionic mutations are most popularly associated with the mind,' Erik imagines a nasal, overeducated voice saying, 'the truth is that all mutations, from telekinesis to bioplasmatics to enhanced senses, are profoundly affected by the way we think and feel. In this new book, drawing on years of research and case studies, Dr. Charles Xavier examines how mutations and the mind influence each other and ourselves, and offers mutants struggling with lack of control ways to find their own emotional balance.'
> 
> "Oh, I liked that," the sales clerk says. The fangs and heavy, wolfish jaw slur her words a little, but she's unself-conscious about them, as well as the sleek auburn pelt she wears under her work outfit. "A bit cheesy in places, but all those things are, aren't they?"
> 
> "Whatever," Erik mutters, but, taking in the run-down, dusty shelves and the cramped aisles – a space the proprietor (possibly the young woman herself) can probably barely afford, says, "I'll take it."


	20. Vignette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Institute's cave began with an old stone house – a pretentious sign informed Erik that it had once been the groundskeeper's – to which a newer, but obnoxiously style-appropriate, extension had been attached. Most of the noise was coming from the courtyard and belonged to people at various stages on the journey to tipsiness, sipping from tiny glasses of wine and chattering to each other. Erik stalked past them all into the house, Armando on his heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, I'm so sorry for the not-posting for the past couple of days, you guys. Moving has kicked into high gear and I've been too busy and/or too tired to write. Also, the cruel fates have also conspired to keep me wireless-less until Tuesday morning. Unless I can track down Internets somewhere this weekend, the next update will be on Tuesday.
> 
> I wrote this just for silliness, because I am too tired to concentrate on anything Serious.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Darwin  
> Warnings: None as such  
> Advertisements: AU, still have powers, Vintner!Charles, cranky food critic!Erik, inspired by wine I had tonight

**Vignette**

The annoying thing about Armando – other than the fact that his mutant power seemed to include adapting to Erik's bad moods so that hostility and misanthropy rolled right off his back – was that he could _also_ adapt to trends and make it look completely natural. Most restaurants flung buzzwords at their menus (eye-rolling was purely reflexive at this point whenever Erik saw words like _reduction_ and tasted something that had been boiled down into a sticky ooze slopped on a filet, or whenever _ancho chile_ was used to describe a tepid spiciness added to mayonnaise), but Darwin's actually made those trends work. And work well.

Armando made it very difficult to be a food critic notorious for finding fault with nearly every single dish that crossed his palate.

"And yet," Armando said serenely as he pulled up the drive to the Institute, "you're still friends with me."

"The world is full of mysteries," Erik grumbled. He pushed his sunglasses further up his nose and glowered through the windshield at the looming bulk of the Xavier estate. "Like how you're assuming that, just because it's local and made with sustainable what the fuck ever, means it has to be good. I have a neighbor who grows potatoes in recycled rubbish bins, and they taste exactly like they were grown in recycled rubbish bins."

Armando hummed. The truck sighed to a stop in the one empty parking space left. Erik pushed at his sunglasses again and got out, and used his power to slam the door shut more petulantly than he perhaps should.

"Charles _does_ know what he's doing." Armando wasn't looking at Erik and Erik refused to look at Armando, but Erik had the sense his friend was grinning. Armando added, a dash of salt in the wound, "The Institute's been in his family for generations. He has his doctorate in genetics _and_ he went to Cornell for viticulture."

"Great, a wine that tastes like paper." They took the side path, following the directions to the cave past a tumbling riot of a garden and a greenhouse. A dark-haired girl with dragonfly wings had flown to the top of a trellis to tend the vines twined around it. Erik breathed in and caught the fragrance of honeysuckle.

He was pretty sure the day was conspiring with Armando and Xavier against him, a late summer day in New York with a breeze taking off the edge of the heat, but the air still warm enough to – Erik sniffed – ah yes, let the rich, heavy scent of mature grapes suffuse it. A few murmuring voices drifted along with the grape smell, soft laughter here and there, but otherwise Erik heard nothing but silence and the breeze in the tree branches.

The Institute's cave began with an old stone house – a pretentious sign informed Erik that it had once been the groundskeeper's – to which a newer, but obnoxiously style-appropriate, extension had been attached. Most of the noise was coming from the courtyard and belonged to people at various stages on the journey to tipsiness, sipping from tiny glasses of wine and chattering to each other. Erik stalked past them all into the house, Armando on his heels.

Charles bloody Francis Xavier Ph.D, Ph.D was, predictably, holding court behind a table on which a dozen bottles stood, his blue eyes alight and hands animated as he gestured his way through an explanation that his auditor – a young woman in a flowered sundress, her dark hair loose over her shoulders – was clearly ignoring in favor of cooing and simpering over him.

"Oh good god," Erik growled. Armando, the traitor, had slipped off to speak with one of Xavier's assistants, a blond-haired minion who had been (according to reports) single-handedly responsible for the excavation of a newer part of the cave.

Erik had never actually been down into the labyrinth that was, supposedly, the place where time and humidity worked their additional magic on top of Xavier's own alchemy. There were reasons for this, he told himself frequently, reasons that had to do with the fact that the Institute didn't have a restaurant attached and not the fact that Erik had an unreasonable crush on the man who had taken over a failing winery and started to turn poison into perfection. The crush had developed rapidly, almost from the moment Charles had pulled him away from a sea of annoying people and asked him about restaurants claiming to use heirloom tomatoes when they were just using whatever they got at the grocery store that day, which had given Erik the opportunity to rant at length and watch Charles's face transform with delight.

So it was only natural, Erik told himself, that Charles should be absolutely intolerable. Add in telepathy along with the smugness and infuriating _cheerfulness_ and the logical conclusion was that Erik should never, ever set foot in Charles's winery.

"The problem is," Armando had said, fresh off a date with Alex and thus completely insufferable, "you don't like it when you like other people. It confuses you." 

There was probably some truth to that, but, Erik told himself, this was because so very few people were worth liking, and those he _did_ like inevitably disappointed him. It was better, therefore, to not like people from the get-go, but Xavier – who'd turned up in the oddest places; didn't the man have work to do? – made it damnably hard not to like him. So Erik had comforted himself with the knowledge that Xavier had only been in the business for ten years after graduating with his paper degrees, and all the telepathy in the world couldn't mind-control grapes into growing into proper wines.

Then the reports in the journals and from the competitions said that the vintages coming out under Xavier's guidance had proven the estate had only been going through a dark period when Kurt Marko had taken it over – that it was clear Brian Xavier had transmitted his knowledge directly to his son. And it was now, after Charles had returned from the Concours Mondial and a few other competitions with a fistful of medals hung around the necks of his Sangiovese, Chianti, and a Viognier-Syrah that had reportedly made a sommelier start crying, that Erik finally had to admit maybe – maybe – Charles had a brain under that ridiculous hair.

So it was only natural, Erik told himself, that he should accompany Armando on his monthly buying trips out of the city to search out new local wines to go with Darwin's new locally-sourced menu. And it was also natural to appreciate the aesthetics of Charles in a deplorable cardigan and collared shirt, shilling wine to bored socialites and whoever else he could charm into taking a few cases off his hands.

 _You're too kind_ , Xavier said directly into Erik's head. _Why don't you come over here and try the '10 Sangiovese?_

Erik went over, because it was either that or be forced to socialize with the idiots clogging up the long-dead groundskeeper's living room. Xavier greeted him with a blinding smile and a small glass of red, holding it so that Erik's fingers were forced ( _forced_ ) to brush his as they closed around the stem to take it.

 _Step over by the window_ , Xavier murmured. Erik did, but only because the afternoon light streaming through let him see the deep ruby of the wine, _light held together by moisture_ as Galileo said, brightening to translucence near the edges of the glass. As the wine aerated he caught the first notes of it, bright and young and hopeful, promising as the lips of a virgin waiting for a kiss, as Charles's lips curled in their sphinx-smile. Erik made himself stop thinking about that.

"I have a Cabernet blend of the same, but I confess I don't care for it as much." Charles had somehow appropriated his own glass, and was drinking it with far less ceremony than Erik. "The oak dominates so easily."

Erik allowed the first taste to curl across his tongue. The bouquet hadn't lied; the wine looked forward, light and fresh without the heaviness of a Cabernet's dark, ripe fruits weighing it down. The spice followed shortly after, rolling through his mouth and warming it, but not unpleasantly so.

"Not bad," he grunted.

 _High praise._ Charles beamed at him. "Would you like to see something else? Something… more mature perhaps?"

Even when expecting it, the innuendo hit Erik like a brick to the head. Even given that, it wasn't entirely unwelcome. He waited as Charles delivered the tasting into the awkward hands of a young, bespectacled man, and endured Armando and Alex's smirks the entire time.

It was worth it, though, Erik decided, once Charles led him down into the vast, eternal quiet of the cave itself. Row on row of barrels stretched out into infinity, their rounded backs lit by a light that fell gently enough to pick out only the highlights of metal and, when Charles turned properly, the edge of his face and the strong line of his nose, his mouth curving again as he leaned up into Erik.

The kiss had initial notes of sweetness, a lingering hint of something stronger – an older chianti, Erik decided, or maybe a pleased excitement that Erik was here with Charles. It deepened into passion, spicy as Charles licked at Erik's mouth and Erik opened properly for him, a warmth that Erik swallowed and suffused his body like blood spreading out through the channels of his veins. The noises Charles made were soft against him, soft but rich, and that and Charles's lips and mouth, his hands hesitant on Erik's cheekbones, made him drunk.

"Something more mature?" Erik asked, with a sort of irritated affection, when Charles had finally stopped kissing and petting him. "I'm not sure if _mature_ is the word I would use to describe your cardigan. Or," he added on top of Charles's annoyed grunt, "that kiss just now."

"Oh, I'll show you _mature_ , Mr. Food Critic," Charles said, and Erik let Charles push him back against the coolness of the rough rock wall and do dirty, mature things while, in the heat of the day above them, strangers prattled on.


	21. Visio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dream is not a typical dream for Erik.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I'm back! All settled at my new place now and I have internet and the energy to write again.
> 
> Tonight's piece was originally going to be yoga fic, but then damek sent me the image below which I believe to be very important, so I wrote something about that instead. The title, which translates to "Vision," is borrowed from medieval dream theories, which held that the _visio_ was a type of true dream that anticipates the future.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Warnings: None as such  
> Advertisements: future canon fic, shirtless Erik, dreamscapes, nostalgia

The dream is not a typical dream for Erik.

Charles has little in the way of prior reference, only memories of almost forty years' standing – memories of memories, really, because they aren't his own although he remembers them for Erik. He might otherwise say _alongside_ Erik, but Erik has never been one to let unnecessaries distract him, too busy carrying around the weight of his own crusade and the body of the mother he'd seen die, so it wouldn't surprise Charles in the least if Erik had let the memories of his old dreams – Schmidt bloody and mangled, mostly – die when the _Herr Doktor_ himself did.

It also wouldn't surprise Charles to know that even Erik's subconscious won't allow him any luxuries. Why it's allowing them _now_ is a question Charles will have to ask the man himself.

"I hope this isn't your doing," Erik says crossly from further down the beach, near the tide line.

Charles tries out a few steps, has to remember what sand under bare feet feels like. He digs his own memories up, a few summers spent at Cape Cod and one very memorable one in the Mediterranean, both with Raven. He hadn't much liked it because he burned so easily and freckled atrociously and sand got into _the_ most uncomfortable places, but at least in France and Italy there had been compensations – long-haired, long-limbed girls with smiles and sunglasses, ready to be charmed by a young man and his smile.

Eventually the sensation comes to him: warm, rough yet strangely sleek at the same time. The sand is the fine white powder that belongs to Florida's Gulf Coast; his toes dig into it with a soft hush-hush, the sand molding to the arch of his foot and lapping at his ankle.

"I assure you, this is not my idea of a good dream," Charles says once he's sure of his balance. From his spot on the sand, his back to Charles, Erik snorts.

If he looks closely, Charles can see the memories running as subtext under all the images. The sand and palm trees are from Miami. Erik had prowled the beaches for a day, searching for news of Schmidt; he had found out the _Caspartina_ 's berth that evening from a drunken fisherman. The steep path down to the beach – Charles, fortunately, had found himself at the foot of it instead of at the top – is from Dover, the cliffs a mute and frightened child had seen from the deck of an evacuation ship. The water is the dark blue of the Atlantic seen from overhead – from an airplane, winging its way across the ocean to South America. There is nothing of Cuba. Everything in here is the past, anchored solidly to Erik's history; there are no flights of fancy here.

Except for one, Charles thinks ruefully as he shuffles across the sand to Erik's side.

He's _walking_ , which isn't something that's happened since That Day years ago. He's long since accepted the wheelchair, to the point that it's strange to look at old pictures of himself, just as it's strange, sometimes, to imagine himself as the boy who found a blue-skinned miracle in his kitchen one night. If he exerted himself the tiniest bit, he could put himself back in the wheelchair and float himself across the sand, but this is Erik's dream and Charles – not for the first time, he thinks ruefully – is willing to accommodate him.

Two flights of fancy, maybe, because they're both young again, the way they were when they first met. The water out there could well be the water Charles pulled Erik from that night. He remembers the shocking coldness of the water – the southern Gulf was slow to warm after the winter – and pulling himself to the blazing, furious beacon of a stranger's mind, the only light there was, otherwise he would have been lost.

Well, he's young again and walking, two things Charles had never really counted on. Erik can't really give him the memories of what being in his body is like, of course, but Charles's brain hoards away every impression and restores it to him when he needs it. It's rediscovery, in a way, looking at the smooth skin stretched across the back of his hand, muscle filling the spaces between skin and bone, moving smoothly and without hesitation.

And Erik, well…. Charles's mouth goes a bit dry, the way it always does when he's around Erik. Fear or want or anger, it doesn't matter; Erik provokes a visceral reaction in him, rather than the cerebral, and it's no less true in the dream world than in the waking.

Erik is, for a wonder, shirtless and stretched out to bask like some kind of hunting creature taking its ease. Charles follows the line of sunlight as it spreads across Erik's shoulders, down every ridge and curve of his arms, vanishing into shadows under tendons and in the hollow of his spine. Charles studies the powerful wings of Erik's shoulder blades and the exposed stretch of his neck where his hair (damp with sweat, the heat also borrowed from Miami) curls there. In most people it would look vulnerable, but not Erik.

Charles wants, very badly, to touch and relearn those contours. There is, he's fairly certain, a ratio more beautiful than _phi_ that could describe how the width of Erik's shoulders runs down into the narrowness of his waist – nearly delicate, save for the strong bones and muscles of his hips. Back in Those Days he'd decided to dedicate the rest of his life to discovering it, a process that seemed to please Erik as much as it had Charles.

"Are you feeling nostalgic today, old friend?" Charles asks. He refrains from shaping his palm to the sun-hot skin of Erik's right shoulder to feel the solid muscle underneath it.

Erik looks at him with pale grey eyes that are the only old things about him. "It's almost that time of year again," he says. "I suppose I was."

They're nearly a month out from the official anniversary of the missile crisis, but it's also a month that Charles considers one of the best of his life. Without looking too hard into it, he knows Erik – despite himself, despite furious lectures from himself and Mystique – cherishes them. They stay locked away, sacrificed like so many other things to Erik's vision, but they _are_ there, and sometimes Erik will take them out and turn them over before dropping them in confusion and trying to forget again.

He wants, very badly, to press himself to Erik's side. If Erik has the luxury of forgetting when he needs to, Charles has the torment of always remembering. He can set aside those memories – of what, exactly, it feels like to have Erik pressed hot and damp against his side, the particular feel of Erik's breath ghosting across his throat – but they always wait for him. Even if he chooses not to acknowledge them, he _knows_ they're there.

Erik sifts his fingers through the sand. They're long, battered but graceful even so, the knuckles swollen oddly where bones hadn't healed the way they ought.

"I don't suppose this is your idea," Erik says after a moment. His voice is still rich and deep – it always has been, has always fallen at a pitch that seemed calculated to wrest Charles's attention.

"I already told you it wasn't. But I do commend you for giving me my hair back." Even though it's a dream, Charles is reluctant to touch his hair, fearful of getting sand in it. Still, it flops in his eyes and seems inordinately hot.

Erik hums. "I always did like your hair."

"And you kept all of yours, you bastard," Charles grumbles. He lowers himself carefully, unused to having thighs and calves to take the weight instead of his arms and shoulders. The sand gives way underneath him, but only a little. If he commends Erik for giving him his legs back too, he's going to keep that to himself.

"So," he says instead, "why am I here?"

"Nostalgia," Erik says with his usual testiness. The look he slants Charles is suspicious. "Unless you're up there mucking about."

Charles has dreams of his own – more nightmares, really – where he _does_ go up there and muck about and _make_ Erik see that extermination and domination are untenable paths. But they end the same, with Erik blank-eyed and staring, all his fire gone, and god help him _Charles can't do that_. Maybe in some future when he's pushed to an extreme he can't imagine he would do that – rip and rip and take from Erik the things that make him spectacular and make him terrible – but in reality as it stands… no.

"If I _were_ mucking about, you wouldn't be having this dream," Charles says with his own frostiness.

"Really?" Erik purrs, tone shaped precisely to draw Charles's attention to the fact that they're both half naked and completely alone on a beach. He even leans close, the bloody arrogant arse, the curve of his body inviting Charles in. "What would you have me dreaming about, Charles?"

Swallowing is difficult. Charles wants to say something flip about world peace and humans and mutants peacefully co-existing, but can't quite dredge up the words.

"Not a beach for one," he manages at last, with an arch look for Erik's bare torso. He traces one finger across the back of Erik's hand, brushing aside grains of sand.

Erik shivers. "Why _did_ you come here? Are you waiting for any opportunity to find me when I have the helmet off? Can't you let a man dream in peace?"

"I thought peace was never an option," Charles says with a mockery he doesn't really feel. "But I just so happened to be out wandering, hoping to gather some useful intelligence on the activities of Stryker Junior, and… there you were."

The predatory smile is back on Erik's face. "Curiosity killed the cat, Charles."

"Satisfaction brought it back, as they say."

Erik laughs, one of his rare, true laughs, one that's all scrunched-shut eyes and teeth, his head tipped back like he wants to shout the laughter upward. It affords Charles a perilously delicious view of the line of Erik's throat, the delicate, intricate contours of vein and tendon and muscle. His belly trembles slightly, drawing Charles's eyes down to the cup of his navel and the maddening line where Erik's pants ride low on his hips.

"You wanted me here," Charles can't resist saying. "The dream wasn't complete, otherwise."

The laughter stops and Erik goes still. He looks away and Charles knows, even without his telepathy, that he's just spoken a truth Erik doesn't want to admit to himself.

It had been one thing, back in Those Days, for Erik to admit that he needed Charles to get to Schmidt, but another thing entirely to admit he wanted Charles for other reasons entirely. Even in the few weeks they'd had together and Charles had tangled them up so much he'd thought they'd never truly separate, he hadn't been able to admit that Charles had become _necessary_ in ways that went beyond the vicious pragmatism that shaped so much of Erik's life.

It's the greatest honor, he thinks, that the boys and girls he'd taken in had become strong-willed men and women and still believed enough in his message to stand by him, whatever their differences and difficulties. He may have helped them discover the key to their abilities, but they've entrusted him with the direction of their lives, and he isn't entirely sure how that debt could ever be repaid. He suspects, in his more humble moments, he's failed, more often than not.

Erik, though… Erik came to him fully-formed, strangely perfect despite the wounds and flaws and tearing, tearing rage. Charles had never encountered that and had never found it since – not even in Logan, who'd been angry but lost all the same. All the minds he's found, from Raven (until she broke away) to his first students to all the students thereafter, are minds he's shaped and trained and _taught_ , and Erik had been none of those things, like steel that had already been set into its true shape.

It's because of this that Erik is the only person who has ever understood him. In most respects their old friendship has never allowed either of them to give the other quarter, but Charles cannot – will not – imagine the world without Erik. Inevitably, of course, they'll both die – neither of their mutations allow for eternal life, so far as Charles knows – but still, the thought of _his_ world without Erik in it hollows him out.

And Erik, he's beginning to suspect, feels the same way. Has _always_ felt the same way, and when they're back in their own bodies and Erik looks at his own pale, ageing face (and unfairly thick mane of white hair), he'll feel the same way still.

"I don't think any world I create would be complete without you," Erik allows. He shoots Charles a glare, as if Charles has forced the confession out of him. "Granted, you would be preaching at me the entire time, and refusing to see sense, but I can't imagine it otherwise."

"You know why I wouldn't _muck about_ with you," Charles says. Erik hasn't leaned away from him, so he permits himself the small liberty of returning the gesture, resting his shoulder against Erik's powerful one. "Because any world _I_ create wouldn't be complete without you and your infernal obstinance or you insisting you know better than I do and everything will end badly."

Erik snorts. "So we're stuck with each other, is what you're saying."

"I'm afraid so." Charles says the words to the weave of muscle that is Erik's deltoid. Everything about him transcends anatomy, he's that beautiful; even older, worn, the power housed in him makes him indescribably beautiful on the rare occasions they see each other. "We might as well make the best of it."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Erik's arm shifts under his lips, drawing back as Erik bends in close.

"Détente?" Charles says, despite knowing there's no chance in hell either of them will hold to it even an hour after waking up. They're old men now, set in their ways, no matter that those ways diverge from one point where they were both together, when they were both happy. They're too used to sacrifice now, he supposes; giving Erik up after the timeless space of tonight makes his heart twist even as he pushes the pain to the side. Next to him, he senses Erik doing the same thing.

"Meetings," Erik says. His fingers, gritty with sand, are tracing Charles's cheekbone and, damn it all, getting sand in his hair as he runs them through the soft brown strands. "Every night I'll take off the helmet and we can… be."

"Be?" Charles asks, bending obligingly backwards so he can watch the peculiar poetry of Erik's arms working to support the weight of those broad shoulders and that wide chest, the curves of them shifting and changing.

"However you want," Erik says, and in the curious way of dreams, slides seamlessly between Charles's legs and bends down to press kisses, and salt and sand, to Charles's lips.

_A bed, then; no beach next time_ , Charles thinks, mostly to taste Erik's laughter, and then he's got his fingers in Erik's hair and that lovely, lovely body pressed against his and there is no thinking anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (NB: Even though this is set roughly around when X1 is, I don't really think of it as part of the X1-X3 series canon. It's more like I was reading some of my old comics today, namely X-Men #25, and I got sad and all DAMMIT CHARLES AND ERIK about it.)


	22. A yoga fic [7]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He takes the book back home to his microscopic studio, fully intending to toss it in a corner and forget about it.
> 
> It ends up on his futon anyway while he microwaves dinner and watches the news on the cable he's pirated from the bigoted human landlord. Staying here is a point of pride for him – he's lived in worse places and it positively _burns_ the landlord that EOH standards apply to mutants too, nowadays – and as he wolfs down his bowl of ramen he wonders what Dr. Charles Xavier, Ph.D thinks about that, a mutant revenge-living in a bigot's apartment and stealing his cable. Then he wonders, unwillingly, if that's something he ought to be proud of anyways, Dr. Charles Xavier, Ph.D or no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, moar yoga fic! This is also something you maybe have been waiting for.
> 
> (If you've seen ten thousand versions of this chapter already, I apologize; AO3 is a brat about formatting blockquotes properly and it's driving me nuts.)

**Chapter seven**

> He takes the book back home to his microscopic studio, fully intending to toss it in a corner and forget about it.
> 
> It ends up on his futon anyway while he microwaves dinner and watches the news on the cable he's pirated from the bigoted human landlord. Staying here is a point of pride for him – he's lived in worse places and it positively _burns_ the landlord that EOH standards apply to mutants too, nowadays – and as he wolfs down his bowl of ramen he wonders what Dr. Charles Xavier, Ph.D thinks about that, a mutant revenge-living in a bigot's apartment and stealing his cable. Then he wonders, unwillingly, if that's something he ought to be proud of anyways, Dr. Charles Xavier, Ph.D or no.
> 
> The news is more of the usual, less mutant-related hysteria than Erik typically sees. There'd been a rally to protest the city's plans to cut funding to mutant education programs – Erik hadn't gone, agitated but clear-headed enough to know that confronting the Purifiers or the NYPD would only end in disaster – but no arrests. A talking head for the city's budget department comes on to explain that mutants form such a small percentage of the population but use a disproportionate amount of resources and it really would be best if the "mutant community" would see to educating its own children, never mind (Erik growls this at the television) that most mutant children are born to baselines.
> 
> Never mind that the "mutant community" is still fractured, by its own politics and divisions, that they can't _separate_ themselves, in part because of the practicalities and in part because not many would turn against the humans they loved. Erik tries to imagine himself rejecting his parents – his parents who had mourned his loss and died believing him gone forever – and can't do it.
> 
> "A spokeswoman for the protesters," the news anchor is droning nasally, "Noriko Ashida, told reporters that the rally is not in any way intended to be an acknowledgment of the third anniversary of the sentencing of Sebastian Shaw, the notorious mutant who had threatened to destroy the financial district as a prelude to instigating an international nuclear war." A picture of Shaw's face, arrogantly defiant – the image held up as the portrait of the _mutant threat_ by every anti-mutant pundit and fearmonger – appears over the anchor's shoulder as the anchor adds reassuringly, "Shaw remains imprisoned in an undisclosed location, with no possibility of parole."
> 
> Not a word, of course, from Noriko Ashida herself. Erik angrily gestures the television into silence and retreats into bed. The anger, his old companion, wells up as the thought of Shaw lying to him all those years; puzzled imaginings of what his parents had done in that time baffle it, enough that Erik stares up at the ceiling, directionless again.
> 
> Impulsively, he picks up _Rage and Serenity_. The picture of Dr. Xavier on the back cover is ludicrously young, almost young enough to pass for his high school yearbook picture. He's clean-cut and respectable – a psionic, the little biography informs him, who graduated with his bachelor's at fifteen and dual Ph.Ds in genetics and psychology by 20. He's only a couple years younger than Erik is, Erik thinks irritably as he flips the book open, and already thinks he knows everything.

"I was very determined to ignore what you said in that book." Erik had stood up and crossed to an over-stuffed bookcase that made up one wall of his living room. The book he took down was familiar – light blue cover, irritating font for the title and generic stock image (a young woman aglow, set against the backdrop of – Charles cringed a little – a stylized human brain) – and well-worn, the corners dogeared and a stain spreading across one corner. Erik tapped the spine against his palm. "But you're a difficult man to ignore, Dr. Xavier." 

"I…" Charles shook his head. "You read my book. You _read my book_."

"Very astute," Erik said dryly. He returned to his seat, folding his long limbs up neatly. "I don't suppose it escaped your notice that it made the bestseller lists in mutant literary publications. It made the _Times_ bestseller list, because humans are morbidly curious. And," he eyed Charles skeptically, "surely you've met some of the mutants who've read it before."

"I have," Charles allowed, "but it's… it's rather different, isn't it?" _Personal_ , he tried, not entirely sure how to articulate the idea. _So many of them were strangers. A few were patients, but most were older mutants who had never learned what they really are, how to be happy in themselves._ He offered Erik a handful of memories: unknown faces coming up to him on the street, or cordial letters (sent by both post and email) thanking him for making such a difference. "Knowing that I helped them change something for the better in their own lives was gratifying of course," and _gratifying_ barely even scratched the surface of what he felt, knowing that yet another mutant had shaken themselves loose of fear and embraced their true nature, "but I… well, I never took yoga lessons from them, have I?"

"No," Erik said, with the soft huff that was his version of laughter, "I don't suppose so. But is it so surprising? In Chapter Seven, you suggest yoga as a possible technique to help clear the mind of clutter and prepare it to concentrate on one's abilities."

"It's surprising, considering it's you," Charles admitted, which earned him more laughter. He grinned, still a little shaken but back in himself firmly enough that he felt he could tease Erik a little. "I would have thought Krav Maga or something like that."

"I know that too," Erik said, "but I found I needed… I needed to remember what peace was like, otherwise I would be whatever creation Shaw had in mind when he took me, and I refused to become that."

> He reads the book through in the space of a sleepless night, wincing in parts – because parts _are_ cheesy, it has to be said – and fighting through his own disbelief in others. He _needs_ the situation, the anger that flares up whenever he thinks of Shaw, the thousands of insults his people must endure daily because they don't have the strength or cohesiveness to defend themselves from the humans that want to see them shackled and limited and harmless. Those are the things that call up his abilities and harness them, and this man – this _boy_ , because Erik can't imagine a face like that ever seeing hardship in its life – is telling him _no there is a balance, there is room for peace too, without balance between anger and serenity, mind and body any control you have is an illusion, and you can do only a fraction of what you're capable of_.
> 
> Gradually it dawns on him that Xavier not only wants to see human limits removed from mutants, he wants to see mutants transcend their _own_ limits. There are worryingly backwards elements in his thinking – he seems to favor integration and believes it's possible – but what he offers could take Erik so far beyond Shaw he can't calculate the distance. 
> 
> Two days later he cancels his lease and moves to a smaller but nicer place in Brooklyn. His new landlady has a daughter who can shoot sparks from her fingers, and who is in awe of Erik's ability. He gets a break on the rent in exchange for doing the occasional bit of repairs and not blinking when Jubilation's fingers light up with fireworks.
> 
> His new neighborhood is a mix of many things, mutants included. He quickly makes a name for himself as the scary one who lives in Mrs. Lee's garden apartment, and the reason why the local bullies lay off the few mutant kids. Mrs. Lee herself is human but her delight in him using his abilities – whether to fix her leaky sink or magnet one of Jubilation's elementary school tormenters to the car while Jubilation gives him a piece of her mind – is unalloyed with fear. The other mutant kids watch him with a cautious but growing respect.
> 
> It's a quieter sort of activism, far removed from Shaw's grandiose plans for mutantkind's place in the world, removed even from the angry mutterings of the activists he sometimes feels like he's betraying by living like this.
> 
> They call themselves by names meant to indicate their abilities. He'd been Magneto for a time, but the name had always carried the subtext of _Shaw Shaw Shaw_ and he hadn't worn it well, or for very long. The name is a reminder that his power, contrary to what Dr. Xavier says should be the case, has never been his own; it's always been Shaw's – given direction by him, used by him and at his bidding. Without Shaw, Erik doesn't know what to _do_ with it.
> 
> _Make it your own_ , Dr. Xavier would say, but Erik has precious little idea how that might be accomplished.
> 
> On one of the days where he chafes more than he wants against the restraints he's placed on himself, he wanders into the yoga studio down the street from Mrs. Lee's house.
> 
> _Peace must have its place next to anger_ , Dr. Xavier had written, so Erik goes in.
> 
> The yogini who runs it is older and human, and not put off by Erik's belligerence. Like most practitioners she specializes in Hatha yoga; unlike many, Erik suspects, she accepts even an angry, confused young man into a beginner's class and introduces him to the first and hardest lesson – the one he still hasn't learned and probably never will: that life, like yoga, is not a competition.

"I don't honor it as I should," Erik said, half-challenging as if expecting Charles to call him on it. "I tell my students to concentrate on the forms as they are best and most comfortably able to perform them – there is no competition among us – but I can't internalize that for myself, not when it comes to defending other mutants and strengthening them against what they have to face."

The _can't_ spoke more to Erik viewing resigning himself to peace and mental purity as resigning from the battle. Charles knew enough of Erik to know that the fire of Erik's anger was something that, if quenched, would mean Erik himself would go out – like that light, that flame. 

"But you _did_ learn something beyond the forms," Charles said. He'd seen it, the perfect, terrible balance in Erik's head, his power rotating on the fulcrum of his anger and a calm that was more like the calm at the center of a hurricane than anything.

"The first time my instructor asked us to assume corpse pose," Erik said. His pale eyes looked off elsewhere – in and out at the same time, into memory and out as if seeing that memory played out on a screen. "We were supposed to clear our minds and concentrate on relaxing each part of our bodies in turn, but I – I found myself thinking of my parents and Hanukkah one year."

The memory unfolded for Charles then, blurry with age. Erik must have been six or so, already angular under the softly rounded cheeks of early childhood, young enough to be a bit impatient with all the solemnity but old enough – and serious enough already – to recognize that the occasion was important and demanded that he sit quietly for a bit.

 _Hanukkah isn't one of the major holidays, not like Pesach or Yom Kippur_ , Erik thought. _But I remember this night very clearly, when my mother used the shamash to light the first candle on the chanukkiyah._

And Charles could _feel_ it, the surge of love and awe as overwhelming as it had been for a little boy who'd still needed his father to tell him the story behind the dimly-lit room and his mother's thin hand plucking the candle from its holder and bending it to set another candle alight. The voices around him – aunts, uncles, cousins, all dimly remembered – murmured happily as the candle flamed to life and the amount of light in the room had doubled.

"That…" Charles coughed around the sudden difficulty in his throat. "That was very beautiful, Erik."

"I'd forgotten it for a very long time. At first I was angry, thinking Shaw had taken it from me… but then I realized he couldn't. He didn't have that power… the power to bury it very deep, maybe, but he couldn't _take_ it." Erik leaned forward, still neatly gathered up into himself but also as intent on Charles as a predator. "You should know better than anyone, Charles, that no one outside of a psychic can truly _take_ anything that belongs to you."

 _Stryker took my peace_ , Charles thought to himself, and was glad, when it occurred to him that his _peace_ had been something closer to _complacence_. Instead he said, "I don't – I know this is very _physician, heal thyself_ , but how do I…" _I've never had to look for those things before. I've always just had them._

"You've assumed they were there," Erik corrected him, a sardonic arch to his eyebrow and the familiar impatience back in full force. "You said in your book that a 'good memory' isn't enough on its own. It's a memory you can think of without bitterness."

Which, Charles knew now, was much harder than it seemed. Everything he had dredged up had a taint or a stain to it, a halo of bitterness that the boy or young man in those memories had no idea what was lying in store for him, because surely, if he did, he wouldn't smile so broadly or be so unabashedly happy and confident in himself and his view of the world. Even his childhood memories carried that sobering tint, or the knowledge that his father was dead or would soon die, consigning him first to his mother's indifference and then Kurt's active cruelty.

He'd guided his own patients to those memories. Everyone had at least one, sometimes only one, that they clung to tightly even if they never brought it out to study in the light of day. For one boy it had been the memory of receiving a small stuffed dog, the sudden and staggering _happiness_ that only a child could have.

"I don't… I don't entirely know if I can do that," Charles admitted. "The problem with eidetic memory and strong opinions, I suppose. And being telepathic from a very early age."

There was no easy way to convey it, what it was like being a telepath also gifted with a powerful memory, being a boy acutely aware of what the adults around him thought of his strangeness and unable to comprehend it (a mutant child right before the real flourishing of mutant rights, back when he might have ended up in a government clinic if his mother hadn't been too embarrassed to risk the public exposure), and then a boy who grew into a young man and then an older one for whom memory was a vast interconnected web of past and present.

Erik nodded thoughtfully, his graceful fingers steepled together. "Perhaps we ought to try something. Lie down on the floor?"

The question at the end was not so much question as command. Ignoring the utterly ludicrous proposition that was lying on the living room floor belonging to his inappropriate crush, his inappropriate crush _who had read his book_ was not as easy as Charles wanted it to be, and manifested itself in a complete inability to relax.

"Charles," Erik snapped, "palms up."

Why that small detail made him more vulnerable, Charles had no idea. Maybe it was in the waiting, he thought, his palms cupped as if waiting for a hand to slide into them, or for something to be placed there. He swallowed heavily and obeyed anyway, and closed his eyes for good measure, hyperaware of Erik sliding out of his chair and onto the floor beside him again.

"Find a memory, I don't care what." Erik's voice had that hypnotic pace to it, the pitch calculated to draw Charles in against his will, and not for the first time Charles wondered if Erik didn't have some psionic ability of his own, or if it was just the force of Erik's own personality and his perceptiveness. "Find a memory," Erik repeated, "and keep it at the front of your mind."

"I should be able to do this, considering it's my bloody technique," Charles grumbled. His research had found that mutant abilities often first manifested in stress, and so subsequent appearances of it were tied either to stressful situations or traumatic recollections of that first experience. Part of the key to detaching a mutant's abilities from stress, he'd concluded, lay in removing the negative stimuli – pain, fear, anger – that served as the precondition for manifestation and balancing it with tranquility and presence in the moment.

"Stop thinking, then, and do it," Erik said, tapping Charles's forehead to indicate he should close his eyes and then working through the relaxation routine from the other day.

Bizarrely, the first memory that came to him was of his first lesson with Erik. Maybe not so bizarrely, Charles supposed, given that Erik was _right here_ , the familiar texture of his mind pressed close against Charles's like a fabric against his fingers. It was not long after Erik had begun to pace the room, while Angel was still demonstrating easy pose and Erik's hand had lit on his back, pushing him to show him how to rest his weight properly.

"Strip away everything that doesn't belong to that moment," Erik continued. "Everything that's accumulated around it, get rid of it. Let it go."

Charles swallowed and wondered distantly if perhaps he ought to choose a more appropriate memory, because stripping away the circumstances of him being in Erik's studio would leave him only with Erik's hands and Erik's body, and the smooth competent voice in his ear.

But no, he had picked it and it was _there_ , hovering behind his eyes and just under his skin. Carefully he began to pull away the strands of association, the lingering awkwardness of his own body that led him to the months of pain and recovery and Steve coaxing him into motion again, that led him to the trial and his own impotence in the face of the law and Stryker's supporters, that led finally to that night and Stryker's hatred exploding like a bullet – hot lead and agony and darkness at last – in his head and his back and _everywhere_.

It left only his body, a little stiff and uncertain but warming under Erik's hands, muscle and bone settling into new patterns that he'd never suspected them capable of before. ( _No_ , he told himself, _there's no before here_.) It was only the relief of feeling his back straighten and the rest of him falling into order – shoulders relaxed, neck supporting his head but not tense with expectation ( _no no expectation here_ ), and all of him attuned to Erik's voice murmuring brusque instructions to do this and that, these things and nothing else beyond them, and the quiet thrill deep in his gut that came with Erik being so close and that warm breath across the side of his face.

 _That's the first time I've felt whole_ , Charles said, distancing himself from the memory a little bit, enough to share it with Erik. _The first time since I can't remember when._

"It's important to you, isn't it?" Erik asked. Spoken out loud, the words had actual weight, pressing down on Charles like a body would. He shivered a little. "Being whole," Erik continued. "Unbroken."

"Like your family is important to you," Charles said. A part of Erik – the ferociously devoted part, which was all of him – would never grow beyond a child's blind worship of his parents. "It's always been… I've always wanted a family, but it's never quite seemed to be in the cards."

"You have your sister."

"Raven is Raven," Charles said. "She needs… I can't be everything for her, or even most things. And she doesn't feel the same way about family that I do. She chooses her own, and I know she loves me, but she… she needs to be free, I suppose. I'm just her boring older brother who wears cardigans all the time." It hadn't always been that way, but like many an older sibling, he'd been far more reluctant to give up the past than she had been. "And if I don't have myself, what do I have?"

"You'll always have that," Erik said fiercely. The hand settling on his shoulder made Charles open his eyes, a bit dizzied with Erik above him and peering intently down with those grey, grey eyes of his. "You have it now, don't you?"

"I – I don't entirely know," Charles said, because it seemed like part of him was in danger of shaking loose its anchors and flying away. 

Erik's brow creased in puzzlement, and Charles caught a slight flicker of annoyance like a sliver of cold working its way through something otherwise warm – something made of determination and affection that seemed made for Charles _himself_ , that wasn't really obligation to an author whose book had helped him, but something else.

He should, he thought a bit wildly, ask Erik to tell him more about his family and maybe offer stories of his own family in return – his father dead too early, his mother indifferent and his stepfather and stepbrother cruel, Raven the only bright spot in it all – but all he could think of was Erik's proximity and Erik not flinching away but waiting with the curious patience of a man who knew that he had the resolution to outlast anything. He should get up and leave and not go back until he was in the safety of a proper lesson with other students to take up Erik's considerable attention. He should _remember_ that what he felt was something felt by patients probably since time began, gratitude for the help and pleasure at being the focus of someone's devotion, and it certainly wasn't a license to kiss Erik like the way Erik was thinking of kissing him.

"Oh," Charles said, blinking and struggling to sit up. Erik moved back to allow this, coiling in on himself again.

 _You're sitting on your yoga instructor's living room floor_ , he told himself, _your yoga instructor who read your book._

"Did you recognize me when you first saw me?" he asked.

A blush colored the harsh edges of Erik's cheekbones but he didn't look away. "Not when I first saw you. But I saw your name on the class list and remembered."

"And you're not doing this," Charles gestured to indicate the two of them on Erik's living room floor, "because you feel you owe me for turning around your life."

" _I_ turned my life around," Erik said, prickly as ever, "and while I don't think I would have been able to do it like this without your book… no." He paused and said, somewhat more softly, "No, I don't owe you, not in that sense," and Charles felt the meaning more than anything, that Erik didn't feel indebted or _obligated_ in the way that meant Charles had a claim on him.

"And you're not doing this because you pity me." _Broken, frightened, a failed visionary who couldn't admit to himself he'd failed._

He could have found out the answer for himself, and he should really _know_ the answer without having to look, because Erik was not the sort of person to pity anyone. The spike of indignation and impatience from Erik was confirmation enough, _not that you should have needed it_ , because why waste time on pity when annoyance worked so much better?

"Oh, shut up, Charles," Erik growled and thought, very distinctly, _does this feel like pity?_ as he leaned into Charles's space and, with the briefest, anticipatory breath ghosting across Charles's mouth, kissed him.


	23. L'infini roulé blanc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paris has dressed for the blue hour, wearing her indigo robes that blush pink at the edges and silhouette the profile of the city.
> 
> Charles has dressed for that hour too, Erik sees, in nothing but his pale, lovely skin and, now that Erik's here, the jewelry he's fashioned out of the iron spindles of the bed. His eyes echo the rich color beyond the windows, wide and drunk with the sight of Erik standing in the doorway, his lips bitten red and a blush bleeding rose across his cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tonight's installment is late because my internet is free and you get what you pay for (i.e. practically no internet for two days until people fix things). Also I started this late, thinking it would only run a couple of thousand words since Erik's pretty much written everything in my very limited repertoire of sexy talk, but then it kept going. And going.
> 
> At any rate, this is for Black_Betty, who suggested that I write the reunion scene for [Billets-doux](http://archiveofourown.org/works/482151/chapters/842450) and [L'heure bleu](http://archiveofourown.org/works/482151/chapters/870963); it may not be necessary to read those, although they set the mood for this.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Mary Crawley (Downton Abbey)  
> Warnings: Très explicit  
> Advertisements: Historical AU (1920s), still have powers, light bondage/domination, marking, no touching, dirty talk, resolved sexual tension, sexy sex sex

**L'infini roulé blanc**

> _Here is what I was thinking of doing to you, beloved, when I return five days hence. First, do not look to be let out of bed for at least a day. Second, do you know how beautiful you would look with the metal bedstead twined around your wrists? Answer: Very, for they would be nothing so crude as simple manacles, but I would shape them into the most beautiful things my power can invent. And then I will torture you, my love, with kisses and bites – I will devour you, I will take you apart and you will be mine again… ___

The telegram arrives a day before Erik himself does; between it and the flurry of letters Erik's sent – four in all, maybe more given the at-times uncertain post, Charles has been left fretful and distracted, aching in the next morning when dreams of what, precisely, Erik plans to do to him on his return, linger behind his eyes and in the tenseness of his muscles and the hard just of his cock between his legs. He tries to stretch into the morning, reminds himself that keeping to his schedule will speed the hours along until the seven o'clock train, but the greater part of him wants to spend the day in bed, tense as a string waiting for a particular finger to pluck it and make it sing.

Eventually he does get up, only after forcing himself away from stroking himself off – it will, he tells his yearning reflection as he dresses, make tonight all the sweeter – and finds the telegram waiting for him in its envelope at the reception desk downstairs.

 _Wait for me in our favorite place_ it says, only Erik's initials in the valediction. Charles breathes deep, checks the desk clerk for any sign he's noticed Charles's reaction – he hasn't, too busy arguing with his girlfriend on the phone – and leaves to begin his day as best he can.

He is, Charles has to admit, mostly useless. His own gifts as an adaptive include a talent for maintaining multiple streams of thought and focusing on several problems – or several people – simultaneously, but today that gift has deserted him. Mercifully none of his meetings involve Emma, who would surely torment him pitilessly the moment she sensed the source of his preoccupation; still, it's an effort to keep at least half a thought on the conversations and needs of the day.

Mostly he turns over what place Erik could possibly mean: the Café Nord where they meet for coffee, the plush sanctuary of L'Enfer (which Erik likes mostly because it represents his triumph over Schmidt) with Emma and the others, the libraries at the universities or the Pont Saint-Louis, where they'd met the first time. Paris has been kind to them, in her own mercurial way; Charles's disenchantment with America, England, and his mother had driven him here, while revenge had driven Erik, and while the city has given them blood and pain of their own it's given them each other, and the only stage large enough for the scope of their desires. The list of places they've visited in their wanderings, from the grandest palaces down to dives so dark and moldy Charles had felt sure they'd come away with the plague, is too long to count. The list of places where they've stolen moments with each other – whether tender (despite Erik's impatience with anything involving _tenderness_ ) or ribald enough to make Charles blush – is very nearly as long.

After the last letter, though, he's fairly certain what Erik means, which only leads him into private imaginings that play across his awareness like cinema, the camera and perspective uncertain, flickering between a first-person view of Erik's dark, rumpled head between his legs and then the tableau of the two of them tangled together, Erik covering him and his own hips arching up –

His lunch companion notices his distraction, of course; even though Charles senses nothing _particular_ about her, he often wonders if Mary Crawley doesn't have some telepathic spark to her.

"Really, my Lord, if you have somewhere else you have to be, don't let me keep you." Madcap Paris might be, but Lady Mary remains a pillar of formality under her loose dress and long jewelry. One of those flawless, celebrated brows is arched meaningfully, the dark eye beneath it fixed on the crumpled telegram in Charles's hand. "Is it from your friend, Mr. Lehnsherr?"

"It is," Charles admits, fairly certain Lady Mary would catch him in a lie. He reads her quickly, enough to catch a glimpse of her lack of surprise and a flicker of calculation: she thinks them both odd, too passionate and fixated on their causes by half, although she finds the two of them _charming_ together, Charles's diffuse energy and Erik's more precise, contained power as harmonious as chiaroscuro.

"Mostly," he continues, after allowing himself a sip of tea and time to collect himself, "I'm rather concerned about what he gets up to on his own."

"Rather like myself and my youngest sister," Lady Mary says dryly. She opens her notebook again, her slender fingers taking up the pen resting by it. "Now, I should like very much to hear your impressions of Boston. You said that you had done your undergraduate studies there, before the – why, you must have been _very_ young!" The astonishing eyes blink as Lady Mary does the calculations. "Not above sixteen, I would wager."

"Child prodigy," Charles says, and descends into his tale as Lady Mary's pen flows across the page.

* * *

Paris has dressed for the blue hour, wearing her indigo robes that blush pink at the edges and silhouette the profile of the city.

Charles has dressed for that hour too, Erik sees, in nothing but his pale, lovely skin and, now that Erik's here, the jewelry he's fashioned out of the iron spindles of the bed. His eyes echo the rich color beyond the windows, wide and drunk with the sight of Erik standing in the doorway, his lips bitten red and a blush bleeding rose across his cheeks.

"You got my message," Erik says past the sudden dryness in his throat. It's an effort to remain casual, to drape his travel-dusty coat across the back of the room's single chair (an obnoxious, prancing affair, its cushions embroidered with flowers) and sink down. His prick throbs between his legs, pressing stupidly against the constriction of his trousers; when he reaches to adjust it, framing the bulge of it with deliberate fingers, Charles's eyes darken and his lovely chest shakes with a sigh.

"Well, it was either this or stand naked in front of the Gare du Nord." Charles _shifts_ , drawing Erik's attention more explicitly to his half-erect cock and the shameless splay of his body. "And how would you like that – me standing there without a stitch on, waiting, all those people oblivious…"

"You're mine to see like this," Erik says bluntly, "oblivious humans or not," but he can't help imagining it, Charles flushed deliciously, all that bare flesh for Erik and Erik alone to savor while humanity shuttles back and forth past them unaware of the power standing _right there_ among them. He likes it more than he should, and Charles – who is, of course, eavesdropping – smiles slow and hot and shifts again, the dark blue coverlet hushing beneath him.

"Maybe you should come closer, then," Charles suggests.

He should. Erik stands but pulls the chair along with him until he's seated again, this time by the bed. If Charles hadn't had the spindles of the bed frame woven between his fingers like iron cat's cradle he could have twisted himself around and reached to touch, but as it is he's bound and displayed for Erik to peruse. A book, Erik thinks, he's read many times but that still surprises him.

 _Can you hear what I'm thinking?_ Erik asks. Charles swallows thickly, his throat flexing around a moan, and nods. Erik sets his hands on his own thighs and orders himself to keep them there. Time to touch later, to glut himself on Charles's body the way he wants, but there's something about the delay, stretching out the two weeks they've been apart an hour or so longer until they're ready to break under it.

Charles already sounds broken, or at least fracturing at the edges, fingers stroking the iron threaded through them; it registers as whispers across the part of Erik that houses his abilities.

The iron is cheap, which Erik dislikes. It rides imperfectly against his metal-sense. "Next time," he tells Charles as he smooths a rough patch that presses to close to the perfect turn of Charles's ankle, "I'll make you something from the finest steel – or maybe only the purest iron. Or bronze, even, to set off your skin." Charles's hands are bound above his head, crossed at his wrists so the iron figure-eights around them before threading through his fingers and melting back into the bed frame again.

"And you'd like that, wouldn't you," he continues, adjusting the fit of the iron minutely, pressing against Charles's pulse point at one instant, fluttering in the sensitive cup of his palm the next. "Anything to keep you in bed and ready for me, so all you could do would be blush that innocent, lying blush of yours even as you ask me very prettily – very _politely_ – for my cock in your mouth or your tight little arse."

"I'd like it now," Charles murmurs, his eyes downcast so his lashes sweep his cheeks. "If you don't mind, sir."

Erik's cock twitches, the ache solidifying itself into something unignorably present. He knows Charles sees the tightening of his fingers in the fabric of his trousers, the fabric wrinkling as his nails catch at it.

"Not yet," Erik says when he thinks he can speak again without saying _god Charles anything_. "I wanted to remind you first, of what I'm going to do to you tonight. And then, after I've made you come… Well, we'll see, won't we?"

Charles looks down at his own cock, which is lovely and already hard, slick at the head with anticipation, before offering Erik a look that is entirely too sardonic given their relative positions. "You're going to make me come while you're sitting… _there._ "

"Did you touch yourself this morning, Charles?" Erik catches a flicker of image-memory, the sense of frustrated yearning and fists clenched at his side. The memory doesn't end in Charles reaching for his cock or the blurry satisfaction of release. "Oh, you didn't…" _No, I was good for you, Erik; I wanted to wait._ "I don't know whether to be pleased that you kept yourself for me, or disappointed… I should have liked to know you woke to thoughts of me so potent the first thing you did was take yourself in hand, imagining it was me there with you – that you didn't slick those fine fingers of yours and fuck yourself with them, trying to pretend they were my cock."

A whimper escapes quite before Charles can bite it back and the blush on his cheeks – the blush that obscures those faint freckles dusting his skin – spreads down his neck to wash across his chest. His nipples are hard, waiting for Erik to bend over and take the closest one between his teeth and bite down.

"You've been unmarked for two weeks now," Erik observes. He can't see Charles's back, of course, but Charles gives him a memory of looking in the mirror from a few days ago, his strong, broad shoulders and the clean column of his spine running down to an arse that, before Erik had left, carried the shell-pink remnants of handprints and bruises shaped to Erik's fingers – and, once Erik had gotten up from kneeling behind him, slick lines of saliva and red scrapes. That memory is pristine, though, only the longing trail of Charles's fingers down his flanks and hips suggesting something other than innocent exploration.

 _We'll have to take care of that_ , Charles sends, the thought tinged with a burning want like the best spice. The long flat of his belly trembles, the muscle beneath his navel twitching as he moves against his shackles, using the bare leverage of the bonds about his wrists to pull himself up. Erik makes a reproving noise, _no, no moving_ and tugs on the metal, stretching Charles's legs out even more, lamplight falling on the shadowed, humid space between his thighs. Charles moans quietly and twists as if trying to cover up, or emphasize his cock, now perfectly flushed and hard, and _you said you wanted your mouth on me._

"Soon," Erik says, although all he can think of now is pulling Charles into him, licking up that firm, delicious length to suck on the head and draw on the sticky dampness there. "But first… first I should spend some time on your nipples, I think. I could suckle them for hours, as I think I told you, and torment them the way you like best: I'd lick and bite one, tugging it until it's swollen and aching while I pinch the other one and roll it between my thumb and forefinger just _so_ ," he raises a hand to demonstrate, pressing digits together around imaginary flesh while in front of him Charles jerked, his back a flawless, mathematical arch.

"And then," Erik unbuttons his collar and pulls at his tie, two more buttons and even the close air of the room falls cool on his chest, "I will drink from the cup of your navel. It's a line in the _Šîr haŠîrîm_ , of course, _Your navel is a rounded goblet, that never lacks blended wine_ , and you would moan and writhe to tempt me lower, trying to rub your poor, neglected cock up against me and beg me to touch you only once – as if once could ever be enough for you, never mind I've told you I won't touch you until I'm good and ready. Could it? Could you ever be satisfied with my hand on your prick only once?"

"No, Erik," Charles gasps. His brown hair, damp with sweat, clings to his forehead and spreads across the pillow, thick and fine, perfect to sink his hands into and tug and pull to get Charles's mouth on his cock, or to expose the long line of his neck for a bite.

Erik swallows again, his vision hazy at the edges with the tendrils of Charles's suggestions pulling at him. "There's so much of you to worship and torment, though." 

It's true; the catalogue is nearly endless, from the ink-stained pads of Charles's fingers to his toes, which Charles can't bear to have touched without twitching away and laughing. There's the sweetly salty tender skin behind his knee and in the join of his elbow, the soft intersection at his armpit, a particular place at Charles's hip that holds a fascination Erik's never been able to parse, vulnerable and powerful at the same time – something in the subdued curve of it and its soft skin, maybe, although underneath it's all firm muscle when Erik presses against it. Charles is compact and strong all over – it would be a mistake to think of him as waifish or weak and Erik never would. The fact that Charles is the one bound and helpless on their bed and Erik is the one feeling himself fall towards powerlessness – that says far more about their relationship than anything else.

 _What if I should disobey?_ Charles asks, sensing weakness and smiling that sphinx-smile that demands Erik either kiss it off him or rise to the challenge. _Or try to escape?_

"To punish you," Erik says as he undoes his waistcoat, shifting as discreetly as he can to accommodate his erection, "I should stop touching you, but I won't be able to. You know too well what you do to me. When you look at me with those eyes, you're all innocence on top and whorishness below; you _know_ , don't you, what you do to me."

"Only what you do to me," Charles whispers. His skin has heated beautifully against the restraints, a warm caress that Erik registers almost as clearly as a physical touch. With shaking fingers, he undoes the buttons on his trousers, smirking as Charles's fogged-glass eyes fix on his hands, the pale lines of his fingers against the charcoal fabric.

"I will be so far gone with wanting you," Erik continues, the words stumbling from him, almost as graceless as he is when he opens the bedside table drawer to produce the tin and draw it to him with his ability, "I think I should break you, burn you, ruin you with the force of it. I'll forget gentleness, opening you up too roughly – but you'll like it, won't you? Like me stretching you the way you haven't allowed yourself, my fingers – three of them, or maybe just two, whatever my patience can stand – buried in you and opening you and feeling you tremble around me like a virgin, shaking with fear and a desire the body can't understand… You'll arch your hips up into me, begging for more, anything, whatever I wish to give you – but what do you want above all?"

"Your cock," Charles says, his thoughts a tumble of profanity and potent images in Erik's head, the two of them twisted together, Erik's hands bracing his hips upward so Erik can push into him, the thick length of him pressing in and in and inexorable and Charles's body like a wave, surging and pulsing against Erik and pulling him along. _I'll show you how you feel when you're in me, when you've split me open and I can't breathe I'm so full of you._

"You'll have that." He climbs onto the bed, awkward with the barrier of thigh and knee, and settles between Charles's legs so he can look up the beautiful stretch of Charles's body, flushed all over with desire, from the upcurved cock between his legs up to where the frustrated sweat has collected in the valley between his collar bones. He can smell Charles, salt and faint soap and the thicker scent that Erik wants to nuzzle into as he licks at Charles's balls and the delicate skin encasing them. His own cock throbs mercilessly and he wonders if Charles has his own magnetism, his body pulling and tugging at Erik's even as his want washes over him, over and over again.

"I'll press my cock into you slowly, watching your tight little hole stretch around the head," Erik murmurs, flicking the last button free. "You'll try to press down on it, greedy little slut that you are, but there's nowhere for you to go – you're bound, you're helpless, and you know you can only take what I wish to give you. But never fear, my darling," and he can't help it, he lays a hand on Charles's hip, shaping his hand to it, and Charles jumps and moans, staring up at him huge-eyed, "you'll have all of it, everything you can take."

 _Erik._ Charles is all a-tremble now, his hips moving in short, yearning thrusts, straining upward for a touch that isn't coming. There's no leverage to be had with the way Erik's bound him but Charles digs at the mattress with his heels, the sturdy muscle of his thigh and calf flexing as if Charles is already trying to push down onto Erik's prick. _Erik Erik Erik_ Charles's mind-voice is resonant with want, _please_.

"I will fuck you open so slowly. You're so tight for me, so ready I wasn't as careful as I ought to have been." The lid flips off the tin with a thought, the oil sudden and sleek on Erik's fingers, staining the rumpled sheet translucent. "You'll whimper and cry out, pleas for me to stop, to keep going, to stop even as you try to take me in further. But," Erik has to close his eyes and reach for the scenario he'd written about and planned in the solitude of his room and the tedium of the train, "I go at my own pace, watching my thick cock disappear into you and you taking me so beautifully, so prettily, your arsehole clenching around me, so slick with the oil I've got on you, my fingers tracing patterns in it and rubbing it – one, maybe, slipping in alongside my prick, stretching you even – "

Charles comes then, open-mouthed and open-eyed and shocky, come spilling across his belly and catching in the thatch of hair between his legs and along the tender crease of his navel. His pleasure is tidal, a fierce wave that catches Erik up in ecstasy and washes him away from himself in a flood of Charles's satisfaction. And Charles is alight with it, burning like the sun against Erik's half-shut eyes, clutching at the iron woven between his fingers, tendrils of delight brushing at Erik again and again to leave him shaking.

He's on Charles almost before he knows it, one hand shoving his trousers down and heedless of the oil stains on the expensive fabric, the other sliding between Charles's legs. He's hot and quivering still, the cleft of his arse slick with sweat and now with something more as Erik presses his middle finger in. Charles sighs and turns his thigh out a little more to accommodate, all he can manage being bound as he is. His spent cock trembles against his belly, a few last drops of come oozing out for Erik to bend down and taste, Charles moaning low as Erik licks across cockhead, sensitive from his orgasm, and Erik does it again to feel Charles twitch uncomfortably and murmur his name.

This part, at least, will be true: Erik's too far gone to be careful or be slow. He opens Charles swiftly, one finger and then two and the third is almost perfunctory, but Charles is making only welcoming, hopeful sounds and encouraging Erik with faint murmurs about how long he's waited, how he hasn't touched himself, has kept himself for Erik, _I'll be so tight for you_ , Charles adds, as if Erik hasn't fully understood.

Finally, finally he has his dick out, Charles's eyes huge and blown black as he fixes on it. Erik pauses to stroke oil over himself from base to tip, staring down at his own cock, thick and hot as it rests in his palm, and the civilized, fine fabric of his trousers, the cufflinks he hasn't unfastened yet, and Charles naked and unabashed and spread out waiting for him. He flicks his thumb across the slit for the brief, incapacitating pleasure of it and Charles's heartfelt moan when he sees the wetness gathering there.

 _You'll come in me_ , Charles thinks at him, the image tinged with certainty rather than hope or pleading. _You'll stay buried in me, won't you, as you spend yourself, and afterwards you could lick it from me, fuck me into another orgasm with only that lovely mouth and tongue of yours. Or we could lie together and you'd so-casually play with my arse, sliding two fingers in to feel the come you've left in me and how loose I am from your cock. Or I could wake like that, already hard from your attention…_

The images surround him like fever-dreams, gripping him tight and holding on deep under his skin. _Charles_ , Erik thinks helplessly and with far less care than he'd imagined pushes awkwardly forward.

Charles's body, even loose from orgasm as it is, resists at first, and _gentle gentle_ Erik tells himself, gripping his cock tight and thrusting into the wet clench of his fist rather than into Charles. His next attempt – yes, yes that's better, nudging against Charles's hole once, twice, a promise of heat before he can push in. And push in, and in, slowly, the swollen head of his cock pressing and sliding into the clutch of Charles's body with aching slowness.

 _Oh god Erik_. Even the thought is choky, nearly incoherent. Charles is boneless with pleasure and heat, urging Erik on with slow undulations of his hips and Erik can only oblige.

Two weeks, it's been two weeks since this. Sweat drips in Erik's eyes, his hair damp and clinging to his forehead in the heat of their room and the heat coming off Charles like a furnace. He slides in and slides, images and sensations coming to him as if refracted through prisms, the thick, searing stretch that is Charles's body giving way, the heavy fullness of Erik's cock resting in him once Erik's pushed in as deep as he can get. Charles is all directionless satisfaction, most of it centered in the ache deep between his legs where he's spread apart but the rest suffusing him and filling his nerves and veins and the spaces between his bones.

Erik starts to move, awkward until he can brace himself above Charles properly and drive down into him. The first thrust jolts a moan from Charles's throat, the second gets another one that's rougher, twisting with desperation at the end. _Come, my love_ Charles says and doesn't say, his thoughts a bright beacon of encouragement, _let me have all of you._

It's what Erik gives him, nearly broken with pleasure as he fucks all those delightful noises out of Charles, breaking the tendrils of iron shackling Charles's ankles so he can push his legs back, tilting Charles's hips up. The angle makes it sweeter, Charles still vulnerable and relying on Erik to hold him up, and Erik able to push in deeper now, until his hips are caught in the cradle of Charles's pelvis and he's buried in Charles, his own hips straining to keep him there. 

He manages a few more thrusts, the subterranean pressure of Charles's body absolutely devastating, and he comes with one last, stuttering push up and _in_ that leaves him collapsed atop Charles with his face buried in Charles's neck and the two of them tangled stickily together. His orgasm goes on and on, perfect right up to the point of pain after going without Charles for so long, come spilling into Charles in pulses that he thinks, hazily, he will lick out of Charles soon – god, yes, more – always, always more, and _Charles_ he thinks, sinking onto the body spread out pliantly beneath him.

Charles nudges at him – tied, Erik thinks muzzily, he's still bound – and waits for Erik to come back to himself enough to unthread the metal from between his fingers. Gingerly, Charles lowers his arms and flexes his fingers, making a satisfied sound at the faint abrasions left on his wrists before turning to Erik again to smooth the hair out of his eyes and lick teasingly at his lips.

"God, I've missed you," Erik murmurs against Charles's mouth. That mouth is swollen and sweet, bitten into sensitivity so Erik can't help but do some biting of his own before he licks his way in. Charles gives way gracefully for a moment before kissing back and sending his own _I missed you as well_ in return.

They part for breath, and for Charles to grin madly at him and flop back onto his pillow so Erik can inspect him lazily, aimless touches that are mostly for reacquaintance rather than for arousal. He's so finely made, Erik thinks, perfect and completely _his_ , and the answering hum of approval informs Erik it works both ways. The thought is strangely comforting, although Erik has always despised the notion of being _owned_ , enough to send lassitude stealing through him and to persuade him to relax close to Charles's warm, damp flank.

 _What happened to all your grand plans?_ Charles asks, smug bastard that he is and unfairly articulate considering what they've just done. Erik changes the kiss he'd been pressing to the inside of Charles's wrist into a nip. _I seem to recall a very thorough and prolonged ravishing._

 _Those can keep_ , he says, and gives Charles his hand back in exchange for drawing Charles beneath his arm, Erik half-covering him now with one leg slung over Charles's and his thumb tracing the line of Charles's collar bone for the space of time he needs to reach out for the lamp to turn it off and leave the room in the dark broken only by the city lights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from Arthur Rimbaud's 1871 poem, "L'étoile a pleuré rose":
> 
> L'étoile a pleuré rose au coeur de tes oreilles,  
> L'infini roulé blanc de ta nuque à tes reins;  
> La mer a perlé rousse à tes mammes vermeilles  
> Et l'Homme saigné noir à ton flanc souverain. 
> 
> [The star has wept rose-color in the heart of your ears,  
> The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back;  
> The sea has foamed russet at your vermilion nipples,  
> And Man bled black at your royal side.]
> 
> (trans. Gilles de Seze)


	24. Here there be [3.4]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You're so very angry_ , Charles thought, a tinge of sadness to the words. _I'm afraid, sometimes, that it will cost you far more than it wins you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More dragon fic! There may be a fifth chapter, although I'm trying to hustle this one along so it's done along with the thirty days and there's still a bunch more stuff I want to write.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles (in a way)  
> Also starring: Moira, Darwin, Alex, Sean  
> Warnings: minor violence  
> Advertisements: Swords! Magic! Dragons!

**Chapter three**

Moira and Armando, despite their apparent youth, were veterans, according to Moira, by necessity; Shaw's depredations had meant Muir eyrie had sent younger and younger riders into patrols and then, at last, the field. In turn, that meant that not only did Erik get a harness for Charles but also much warmer flying clothes, a sturdy charcoal gray wool that fit beneath his armor, and a proper set of gloves.

The flight to Shaw's territory took the better part of two days, two days of low, tedious, _careful_ flying, on Armando's advice. Shaw's patrols had been active of late – "Not," Armando said, "because he thinks anyone's coming for him. He's looking to extort money and goods out of the villagers in the valleys and the foothills," and the ruined, smoking villages they passed suggested that some had, foolishly, tried to resist.

Charles flew on, grimly silent, whenever they encountered one of those places. Erik had refused to venture too close – who knew what spies Shaw had, or if the villagers would be desperate enough for help that they would report on strange riders visiting. When Erik asked, not entirely understanding why a wild dragon would be so upset at the destruction of a few hamlets not above a few hundred people, Charles gave him back a flurry of images, of farmsteads laid waste by war, smoke rising from sword-torn fields, hunger in the winter and gold glinting in the moonlight to wait for morning and discovery and a chance to help.

 _I give my loyalty to both our races_ , Charles told him. _It's only time and change that have helped turn dragons against humans, as humans have found even more ridiculous reasons to make war on each other. If I could, I would make it so no dragon would harm another human, no matter the strength of the bond, and no human would ask it of their dragon._

 _Do you have it in you to help me kill Shaw?_ Erik asked, his heart suddenly chilled at the possibility that Charles, his only ally, wouldn't. _You know what this means to me._

The huge body beneath him heaved in something like a sigh. _Of course I do, and never fear: I will help you, and I'll see Shaw dead. He's perverted the bond between dragons and humans in a way that should never, ever have been allowed – and he seeks to dominate us, which I cannot permit._ Charles swooped low over the tops of a stand of pine trees, Havok hovering close by his near side. _But I won't take joy in it the way you will, my friend._

Erik scowled. _You talk as if I'm the bloodthirsty one, not Shaw._

 _I don't understand revenge_ , Charles told him, and when Erik reminded Charles of his sisters, his family, the eyrie lost to him, said, _Attempting to free them isn't vengeance. But I… It will not grieve me, when Shaw is dead._

At least Charles had said _when_. Erik comforted himself with that and withdrew from the conversation, determinedly ignoring the fact that they had carried on the entirety of it telepathically.

Day was starting to fall down to evening, the sun pricked by and bleeding out across the needle-pointed mountains that marked the home ranges of Shaw's eyrie. Moira, who had scouted in the region previously, flew ahead to check on the likelihood of a sheltered resting place. It was, so far as Erik could tell, not likely: the forest had started to give way to rolling farmland, and where stands of trees were left, many had been burnt to cinders.

"Shaw doesn't want anyone sneaking in the backdoor," Armando had said yesterday, when they'd come to the charred remnants of a woodlot. "He's not stupid – he knows he'll need timber supplies – but that still makes it harder for us."

Moira signaled from up ahead that she had, miraculously, come across a campsite. Erik opened his thoughts to tell Charles to follow, and the order was halfway articulated when Charles veered hard to the west and took off. Behind them, and rapidly receding, Moira and Armando shouted in surprise, and Erik caught the faintest wisps of Banshee and Havok's wings beating hard to come about and pursue them.

 _Charles!_ Erik thought fiercely, cursing the stupid dragon and his idiosyncratic bond, the lack even of the novice tool of the hackamore, which no self-respecting, fully-bonded rider used. _CHARLES!_

 _Not now_ , the dragon said, his great wings working inexorably, carrying him farther and farther from Moira and Armando. Havok and Banshee were young yet, and nowhere near Charles's size. Erik spared a thought for their riders and hoped they didn't think he'd led them into a trap, or betrayed them.

After perhaps a half-hour's steady flight, Charles's wings swept forward and down once, braking him sharply. Erik peered over the great bronzy curve of Charles's neck and saw a windbreak of oaks and mountain ashes and a faded path, and in the shadow beneath Charles's body, a tiny house, tiny enough for Charles to crush it.

Even smaller, although growing as Charles descended, was a man. Erik brushed dust from his goggles and saw in the gathering evening gloom dark hair and very wide eyes behind a large pair of spectacles, an expression of astonishment that probably had a twin on Erik's face.

 _What in the name of the fire, Charles?_ Erik held tight to the pommel of his saddle, such as it was, as Charles landed.

 _The boy I was meant to be bonded with_ , Charles said briefly. Erik ignored the sudden, vicious jolt of _jealousy-loss-anger_ and busied himself with the straps on his harness as the man – no longer Charles's boy but a young man of about twenty – stepped forward.

"X?" the young man said, wonderingly. He reached out a hesitant hand, glancing at Erik, and seemed ready to withdraw – except Charles, damn him, butted his huge head under the young man's palm and purred happily. "I – I hadn't thought I'd ever see you again. I thought you were dead."

"Not dead, Henry" Charles rumbled. The boy, Henry, had discovered a sensitive spot underneath the first cresting spikes behind Charles's left eye. He'd approached from the left side, as was proper, Erik saw; the boy _had_ been a rider, or had been in training to be one. "I have missed you."

"I've thought about you a lot," Henry said wistfully. He shot Erik a look of deep skepticism. "Who is this?"

"Erik Lehnsherr, of Eisenhardt," Erik grunted, sliding down Charles's side.

"Ah." Henry shifted and went slightly red. "I – I heard what happened. I'm sorry."

"Erik and I are working together," Charles explained, drawing his still-mantled wings in closer; glancing behind him, Erik saw Banshee and Havok coming in swiftly, the dying sun glinting on their scales and the spears Moira and Armando had drawn. Charles twisted around and called out something in the low tones dragons used to put each other at ease, and the two younger dragons slowed. Charles turned back to Henry and lowered his head, clearly expecting that scratching would resume. "We're going to take care of Sebastian Shaw."

"He means we're going to kill him," Erik said and, placing a hand on his own sword, added, "And if you think about calling for help, I can either kill you now," and never mind what Charles thought about it, "or tie you up and gag you and leave you for mercy to find."

"If you think I'm going to warn _Shaw_ …" Henry shook his head, anxious eyes darting to Moira and Armando, who were just down dismounting themselves. "I'm assuming if you know X's story, you know I'm not going to help Shaw by warning him."

"Shaw destroyed your eyrie and you did nothing about it," Erik said, ignoring Charles's irritable _Erik, he was seven when Shaw came for us; do you honestly expect infants to swear blood vengeance now?_ "You live in his territory, you could have any one of a hundred reasons to – "

 _He will not_ , Charles thought at him, the words like knives. Erik winced. _The day Henry wishes or brings harm upon another being will be the day the world burns, Erik. Put aside your suspicion and learn to ask for help._

Asking was not one of Erik's strong points, but with Charles sighing the thought at him, and the knowledge that he knew nothing of Shaw's lands or what waited for them at the eyrie, forced the request from him. It came out rather more grudgingly than Charles liked (and Moira, for that matter, who sighed disapprovingly).

"I'll do what I can," Henry said, swallowing thickly. "There's not much I _can_ do, of course, but I can tell you what I know about the place, which is... considerable."

"Not ideal," Erik growled, "but thank you."

He'd been imagining... well, he didn't know quite what. More energy, Henry activated by being back with the dragon he'd been promised to. (Erik squelched the anger at that thought.) Or something more material, at any rate, because Henry had had his eyrie destroyed, he was an exile, and that should _mean_ something.

"You should leave," Henry was saying to Charles, and being rather more bold with stroking the dragon's face and neck. "Shaw's patrols come out this way frequently, but there's an abandoned hunter's cave high up in the mountains southward that the patrols never go to."

Charles nodded curtly and, in silent dragon-language, ordered the other two off. He waited until they were airborne, and until he sent a last farewell brushing across Erik's awareness, to follow, a dark shape against the dark sky.

Henry shut the door tightly behind him and latched it, and it was only after twitching the curtains shut did he turn back to Erik and the others.

"I don't know if what you're doing is mad or very, very necessary," he said at last, "but before we talk about that… do you wish to share the meal with me?" A small supper had been laid on a table, to which Moira and Armando were ready to contribute some of the rations in their packs – even, Erik saw with irritation, a fine flask of Cassidy whiskey Moira had stashed away in her pack. Henry took the ceremonial first swallow and hummed appreciatively.

They ate, and Henry supplied a brief tale of himself: he had been taken captive in Shaw's raid on Westchester, and had believed his future bonding-mate dead in the chaos.

"I would not have made much of a rider; even when I was very little, my family used to say that I would only use my dragon to ride between the archives," Henry said, pushing his spectacles up his nose somewhat self-consciously. That Erik could imagine Charles happy with ferrying a scholar back and forth between the schools stung more than he thought it would; he had intended the picture to be sardonic. "Fortunately, Shaw had the same opinion of me."

"We've heard he's started using captured riders as slave labor. Or forced conscripts, if they're trusted enough," Armando said. He'd sprawled carelessly in his chair, legs stretched across the flagstones and taking up, Erik grumbled to himself, entirely too much space. Henry's small dwelling had mostly been given over to books and scholarly clutter. "Does he let any of you go?"

"Oh, I'm not free." Henry blinked owlishly, as if surprised Armando would even consider it. "My life is forfeit if I stray so much as a day's walk from my house, and I am at Shaw's command whenever he desires it. Mostly it's for translation, deciphering old alchemical texts… He saw my potential did not lie in a dragon's saddle, so he educated me. I spent most of my growing-up either at his court or in the archives. Hellfire's are extensive."

"Sounds like that's where he learned of that magic," Erik said. Shaw was cunning – it would be a mistake to think otherwise, and too many had dismissed him as a thuggish warlord – and Erik could easily see him puzzling out lost, dust-covered secrets.

"Yes," Henry said, shifting uncomfortably. "It had been a goal of his to find a way to control dragons without the bond."

"You don't _control_ dragons with the bond," Erik snapped, straightening. Even if the boy had been an incompetent rider, grossly unworthy of a dragon like Charles, he should have known that, the most basic lesson any rider learned before even touching the dragon they would call their own. _Be kind _, Charles to him. Erik ignored the dragon. "I assume you're talking about the collars, however."__

__"Of course you don't," Henry said quickly. He toyed with a loose thread in his robe, which was, like the rest of his house, dusty and rather rumpled. "But control _is_ what Shaw seeks. The collars were a… a prototype, if you want: he developed them with a man named Stryker, who had been one of the trainers before becoming Shaw's lieutenant. Stryker died a few years ago, probably to prevent him from taking the secrets elsewhere, or using them to force Shaw from power."_ _

__"The reports we're hearing, though," Moira began. "The collars are bad enough, of course, but this new thing sounds – well, we don't even know how it sounds, except _bad_."_ _

__"He has a… device," Henry said. His hands – a scholar's hands, Erik saw, quick and deft – traced out a sword-like shape in the air, or a spearhead. "It looks like any bladed weapon, but the alloy it uses… I've not been able to study it – he won't allow that – but I've read descriptions of its use." Even behind his spectacles, Henry's eyes were wide. "It _banks_ a dragon's fire. Contains it somehow and _keeps_ it contained."_ _

__"And he uses this against the dragons from the holds he's defeated, if they don't stay in line," Armando said, with a quick nod from Moira in agreement. "Or he threatens them with it."_ _

__Henry slumped into the room's one remaining chair, a rickety thing shuffled up close to the hearth. "I've searched through all the books I can find – not easy, Shaw keeps a close eye on the library holdings that have to do with dracology – and there's no mention of the metal he uses, or if there's any treatment for its effects. If there's anything to be found, it must be in alchemical or metallurgical texts, and I've not been able to access those in years, other than the bits and pieces Shaw gives me."_ _

__"How did you learn about it?" Moira asked. She had appropriated the only semi-comfortable piece of furniture, a small sofa that had the remains of their dinner spread on the table by it. "We heard through the rumor mill, but you've got to have better sources."_ _

__"I've never seen it used," Henry admitted. "Shaw's still perfecting it; as far as I know, he's only the one so far, which is more than enough. He doesn't kill the dragons, but their fire _is_ diminished. They're earthbound."_ _

__Charles, who had of course been listening in, was a ripple of shock in Erik's head. Across the room, he saw Moira and Armando both twitch; Banshee and Havok had caught the implication, then. _Tamed_ , Charles had said, as if puzzled that such a word could ever be applied to dragons, when _earthbound_ was so much worse._ _

__"If he has an arsenal of those," Erik said, fear and rage beating hot inside him, too fierce for Charles's calming presence to cool, "then we need to move before he gets them out in the field. Or, if he hasn't got one yet, we need to move before he _does._ "_ _

____

* * *

After considerable argument, they decided that Moira and Banshee should go report the news to Muir eyrie and the other holds. Of the two younger dragons, Banshee was the fastest, and rather less burdened after Moira stripped him of everything except enough rations for a blistering two-day flight to Muir territory. The two of them had vanished almost too quickly for Erik's comfort; despite the urgency of the situation, Moira would need to husband Banshee's strength.

 _Fly high, fly fast_ , he thought, as close to prayer as he ever got.

Their own flight was short and slow, mercifully sheltered by cloud cover. Charles navigated with the peculiar dragon sense that kept him attuned to the passage of the earth beneath them. Henry clung tightly behind him, his presence a quandary – Erik had insisted the danger of betrayal, deliberate _or_ accidental, was too great, and at any rate if he were heading _towards_ the eyrie Shaw could hardly object – but the boy had fallen silent once Charles had taken to the air, not venturing to shout questions at Erik over the rush of the wind.

Armando and Havok flew close, close enough for Erik to catch the heat that trailed from Havok's mouth as the young dragon huffed and smoked. He hadn't yet learned finesse, how to navigate the air currents rather than relying on the heat and buoyancy his own body created, but at least he seemed to be learning: one slaty gray eye was fixed on Charles.

They sheltered for the night in a ruined manor house, large enough to house the two dragons and undamaged enough to conceal them. Henry remarked on its history – it had belonged to an enemy of Shaw's and had met a violent end (Erik was unsurprised to learn it had been one of Stryker's properties, left desolate as an example) – and, with a conflicted look at Charles, who gazed back with reptilian calm, retreated into his blankets to sleep.

With Henry and Armando so close, Erik had no choice but to talk silently with Charles.

He told himself that, anyway, and tried to ignore the curl of warmth around his mind that was Charles reasserting himself, the familiarity of the gesture like two hands clasping together. Erik allowed Charles to draw him close – no fire tonight, despite the chill that settled fast with the sun's disappearance – and leaned against the sturdy support of Charles's shoulder. Above the bony prominence of Charles's wing, Erik saw the midnight-blue sky and its decorations of stars, the broken ribs and turrets of the manor house.

 _You're so very angry_ , Charles thought, a tinge of sadness to the words. _I'm afraid, sometimes, that it will cost you far more than it wins you._

 _If it wins me Shaw's death, it'll be enough_ , Erik told him, but with less conviction than he usually managed. Charles sighed, the huge body moving under Erik's cheek and sudden warmth gusting around him. In the dark, the dragon's eye gathered the faint light to itself and glowed with a pale fire that was, strangely, familiar and known. Erik knew Charles in his _bones_ , because that was the nature of the tie between dragon and rider, and never mind that he had entered into it half-unwillingly, that the two of them had not had time to grow together.

He touched Charles behind one of his eyes, where the scales were small and delicate, giving way to the leathery skin of Charles's eyelid. Charles's eye slid shut and tranquility wrapped itself around Erik, heavy and warm enough to pull him down to sleep.

The day came slowly, the chill lingering just beyond the warm embrace of Charles's wing. The dragon had tucked his head in close to Erik and so pushing Erik into his chest, up against the quiet roar of the dragon's internal fire. Charles's mind hummed with contentment, flickers of dream-memories drifting through Erik's head, slow enough for him to catch them and turn them over.

Mostly they were memories of solitude, a dragon's contentment with _being_ occasionally broken by some news of injustice within Charles's territory. So he would fly out and chase off marauders or riders errant, capture whatever they left behind, and fly away back home again. He did this year on year, time blurring, until he saw a helpless, armored shape lying in a stream whose course had been dammed by boulders torn from the mountain towering overhead, and picked it up in his claw – its face was pale, blood washed pink from a deep cut starting to redden again, and it was so very cold and still – and, bearing it gently, returned home.

* * *

Hellfire eyrie, like most eyries, sat astride a collection of mountaintops, carved into the rock face and reachable only by dragon or – Henry offered this up unwillingly – a twisting, spiral stair that snaked miles up the hillside to the smallest of the eyrie's outposts. Few used it, and the ones that did were usually in no state to attempt anything once they arrived at the top.

"Shaw has no gatekeepers, though," Henry allowed when Armando asked him about it. "The dragons are usually the ones who take goods from the base of the mountain up to the top, but unless you smuggle yourselves in some laundry or something…"

"I have my dignity," Armando said with a grin. "And we do have time."

They had given themselves six days to move in and out and obtain the intelligence they needed about Shaw's weapon. Moira had reckoned she could push Banshee hard enough to reach Muir in two days. Then two days to muster the forces at the eyrie and send riders to persuade the neighboring eyries of the threat, and two more to return. 

"We'll need to know how it works," Erik had said in the discussion that had led to Moira leaving. "If we work fast, Henry might be able to fashion something to counter it," this was greeted with a dispirited sigh from Henry, "or find some way to sabotage it, if we can."

 _And put an end to Shaw_ he said to himself. Charles had caught the addition, of course, but said nothing, his mind carefully distant as it was when he attempted to shield himself from the more bloodthirsty thoughts Erik entertained.

Now, though, Erik suppressed a shiver at having Charles so far from him. The night in Henry's house had been strange, an itch of absence just beneath his skin and so just out of reach, but now Charles and Havok were far from here, having turned and left when Henry had insisted that the patrols would come too frequently to evade them all. He sensed Charles, sensed that he was safe and faintly annoyed, probably at having to keep Havok from chasing off after Armando or doing something similarly foolish, but the _distance_ … He couldn't compel Charles, any more than Charles could compel him, but Erik might have now, if he could.

"I may be able to help with that," Henry said at last. "At least, you would not have to risk the mountain yet, and I can find a dragon and its rider to take me up with minimal questions." He sighed. "Shaw will have them, of course – he keeps a tight leash on those of us who come from the eyries he's defeated – but there are some small matters I've been looking into for him, and he may accept the excuse for my coming without a summons."

"So we're to sit here and do nothing," Erik said flatly.

"Essentially, yes," Henry said, blinking as if shocked Erik had expected nothing else. "But if you would like to risk your life pointlessly, you are certainly free to do so.

"Damn," Armando whistled, which seemed to bolster Henry's confidence, because he had the temerity to glower at Erik as if threatening him to stay where he was, before darting out the door.

 _Here_ was the house of an old scholar, filled with books that drew Erik's reluctant attention. The scholar herself was absent, off gathering specimens to aid in her search for a better burn cream. Most of the books Erik found were of medicine and botany, the illustrations painstaking above tediously dry descriptions of petals and healing properties.

Charles, he decided, would love them. There had been books, he recalled from his own memories of Charles's lair and the ones Charles had given him, most of them encased in gold and precious gems and kept stacked in trunks, surrounded by more riches, but some had been left open either on lecterns or on the floor, as if Charles perused them when he wished. The pages had been unexpectedly plain, the only decorations the crimson of the rubrics or fancy penwork, and the texts had been esoteric poems on dragons or scientific works about the stars.

Henry was gone the better part of two days, enough time for Erik to worry that something had happened. Armando kept careful watch on the windows looking over the street but reported no one taking an interest in the house, and no extra patrols either on foot or dragonback proceeding down the wide streets. Despite that, Erik nearly came out of his skin when Henry stumbled back in late in the afternoon on the second day, pale and struggling for a calm that had utterly deserted him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kind of surprised I managed to post tonight, because just as I was sitting down to write I saw that Island, Island was updated, and then when I was taking a break I saw that The Starry Sky and the Deep Sea had been updated too, and basically why are you reading this, go read those if you haven't already.


	25. Synapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles was being earnest and persuasive with the CIA agent who'd brought them here while Erik methodically plowed through his lunch. From across the commissary – Erik refused to negotiate with terrorists, and that included the American government – he couldn't tell the topic of conversation, but it had all of Charles's attention poured into it.
> 
> "Does he ever get angry?" Erik asked.
> 
> "Oh, Charles doesn't get angry," Raven said, both fond and exasperated. "He gets disappointed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What you are about to read is the first fic I ever started for this fandom. I say "started" because until tonight it sat unfinished in my drafts folder. So this is, like, a piece of history. Or something. Probably something.
> 
> Pairing: pre-Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Raven, Moira, Betsy Braddock (Psylocke)  
> Warnings: borderline non-con (telepathically-induced arousal, but nothing past that), age-appropriate homophobia, trauma, angst  
> Advertisements: canon (road trip), Charles being scary
> 
> NB: Betsy here is one of the earlier iterations of Psylocke, from the _Captain Britain_ series.

**Synapse**

Charles was being earnest and persuasive with the CIA agent who'd brought them here while Erik methodically plowed through his lunch. From across the commissary – Erik refused to negotiate with terrorists, and that included the American government – he couldn't tell the topic of conversation, but it had all of Charles's attention poured into it.

"Does he ever get angry?" Erik asked.

"Oh, Charles doesn't get angry," Raven said, both fond and exasperated. "He gets disappointed."

* * *

"I'm tired of the plane."

If Erik hadn't known better, he'd have sworn that, underneath the Oxbridge accent and affected carelessness, Charles was being petulant. Agent MacTaggert – who remained Agent MacTaggert despite her insistence that Erik call her Moira – had tried to say this next trip would be short, a jaunt up to Rhode Island, but Charles had said, more emphatically, "I'm _tired_ of the _plane_ ," and Agent MacTaggert let it go.

 _Completely made up, of course,_ he’d said later to Erik, in the privacy of Erik’s head. _But I need to talk._ Not _we_. Charles doesn’t want conversation. It works well, considering that Erik is reluctant to provide it.

Charles could, theoretically, natter at Erik telepathically. In the least, it would save Erik the trouble of checking the Mercedes for bugs and anything else Agent MacTaggert might have seen fit to send along with them. Like most academics, though, Charles loves the sound of his own voice, even if it’s telepathically enhanced to spare him from having to shout.

"Think about it," he says, hands off the wheel for a moment to gesture, "how limited a vocabulary we have for our abilities. We speak of _seeing_ and _hearing_ and _touching_ with our power, but what do those mean, when we're talking about altering phenomena on a molecular – perhaps even atomic or sub-atomic – level?" Obediently, if reluctantly, Erik tries to think about how it feels to bend metal to his will, the awareness of it around him – like touching, he thinks, but deeper than that, somewhere beneath his skin. The words get snarled up. Charles laughs, the laugh of a man who's been proven right. "See?"

"I've never thought much about it," Erik says. Charles laughs some more.

* * *

"I dunno." Raven toyed with the remnants of her dessert. "He tried to explain it once… For him, it's like all the bad emotions – anger, sadness, hatred, that kind of stuff? – it translates as pain." She slid him a look from under the thick, shining thatch of her hair. "That was how he found you in the first place, you know."

No, Erik _didn't_ know. Raven kept on, twisting her spoon more energetically through the carcass of her apple pie: "His mom got remarried to this total jerk… He hated that I was there, that Charles's mom was taking care of me for some family members she'd never even met." She caught Erik's half-stifled _What?_ and said, "Yeah, that was how I got in; he just sort of made her believe I was some distant cousin from some long-lost Xaviers. Anyway, thank God that marriage didn't last long, because Charles… We were both learning about our powers, you know? And it was easier for Charles to help me with mine than for me to help him with his. Mostly I thought at him a lot until he got used to blocking me out, but strong, persistent emotion, like if your step-dad hates you? That wore on him."

Raven couldn't keep much back, fondness and love and pride saturating her words. Charles, Erik reflected, seemed to be good at provoking those emotions.

* * *

There’s an edge to the laughter, a bit of mania. Charles grins, almost as exuberant as when he's in Cerebro, with something dark underneath it. "And what about the rest of us," he continues, "whose powers don’t alter things we can perceive directly? Does my mind really travel, when it stays in my body, and I know I'm still Charles Xavier? I don't see words when I'm in someone else's head, but I 'read' minds nonetheless."

"Did Agent MacTaggert let you at the coffee again, Charles?" Erik asks. Charles shakes his head, presses a little harder on the gas pedal, and keeps talking about how mutagenic powers will force us – mutants, humans, he doesn't say – to reevaluate how we think about the senses, the infinity of ways in which different powers allow their owners to experience the world. "So much to learn," Charles says, ineffably happy, and after a brief pause to make sure the other drivers know to give them space, continues with his lecture, seemingly unaware of the fact he’s weaving a ton of metal in and out of highway traffic.

The Mercedes 300SL is a powerful creature, all rumble and throb, and it devours miles of highway without effort. Every steel rivet and panel hums in time with the endless thunder of the engine, seeping into Erik's bones. Wind whips through his hair – even more ridiculously through Charles's, pulling it every which way – and tugs his collar, but the sun overhead warms him, heats the glossy red metal coat of the car under his fingers. In any other context he might find it calming, hours to appreciate finely-crafted steel doing what it was designed to do, but not now.

Charles guides the Mercedes with a pair of casual fingers on the wheel, too busy grinning ahead into the distant lights of New York to care that they're pushing ninety and only his telepathy keeps other vehicles prudently in the driving lane. He's a shockingly bad driver ("I learned in England," he'd said offhandedly, when Erik asked), so bad that Erik has to remind himself he has the ability to extricate them from any impending disaster. Of course, Charles catches him thinking it, and of course, Charles doesn't slow down. They blow by six patrol cars in fifty miles, fifty miles in barely forty minutes, and none of the cops so much as twitch.

"Sometimes it’s good to get out of that damned steel tube," Charles says, apropos of nothing except the bemusement that's been wrapped around Erik since Charles's announcement back in Washington. "You know," Charles continues, a knowing smile resting in the corner of his mouth, "get out, stretch a little." 

_Stretch_ holds dimensions of meaning, and so does the smile curving Charles's lips.

There are times when it's something of a surprise to remember that Charles is young. He shifts between young-old-young-old, young when he's enthusiastic and passionate and grinning like a maniac over some new discovery, old once more when he starts to talk about responsibility, when he talks about methods he could use to bring out the full capability of the recruits they'll find. Definitely old when they're in a corner of some tiny restaurant and the wine, instead of making him drunk, makes him reflective. That confuses Erik, who has felt nothing but old for a very long while.

"If we had the time, we could make a road trip of it," Charles says meditatively.

"Like Kerouac?" He imagines Charles unbuttoned and slouched in some roadside dive, covered with highway dust and toying with something less innocent than the scotch he seems to prefer. The image makes something shiver under his ribcage, muscles and nerves standing to attention. He glances at Charles, half-expecting to see that omniscient Mona-Lisa smile on those red lips, but Charles is only looking thoughtfully ahead into a future only he sees.

Instead of looking at that, Erik looks at the city.

New York City sprawls before them, glittering through her curtain of smog. Mercifully, Charles eases off the gas. Behind them, the long line of cars twines like a snake, shifting as Charles silently tells the drivers they can make use of the passing lane again. Erik tries to imagine a month on the road in the company of another person, in the company of _Charles_ , specifically. It isn't easy.

Charles laughs. "Granted, I was starting to feel a bit like James Bond, in that jet." He'd devoured the Fleming novels waiting for MacTaggert to get clearance from the CIA, a period of time Erik considered incarceration and Charles considered an inconvenience. The plane MacTaggert had finally acquired, sleekly and anonymously white on the outside and mahogany and comfort within, hadn't eased the lingering conviction that they were prisoners on work release. 

Next to him, Charles sighs aggrievedly at that mental image. Erik doesn't offer an apology for himself.

"It would be… an experience," he allows, mostly to head off Charles's idealist sermonizing.

Part of him – he's pretty sure Charles knows about this part – wants to take Charles by the head and bang it against a wall until Charles can see what is so plain, so painfully _obvious_ to Erik. Another part wants to poke and prod, and antagonize Charles into some clearer awareness of himself. For a telepath, Erik thinks, Charles is terribly bad at reading his own mind.

"What about the next recruit?" he asks, to change to subject.

"Possibly precognitive, or telepathic," Charles says. The undercurrent is back, pulling his words down into something like anger, or as close to anger as Erik's ever heard Charles get. "It's possible that she is both, and that the two are related; I've theorized that one predominant mutation can also involve many subsidiary ones, like my genius and my telepathy, for example." Erik snorts and Charles grins unabashedly. "Whatever the case, we'll know more once we get there and I have the chance to speak with her."

Erik hears the request for silence riding underneath Charles's tone, or maybe it's Charles' desire bleeding through again. Either way, he's grateful to turn his thoughts to the immensity of the city before them, and trace the miles of iron and steel that make up the bones of her.

* * *

After the city, southern New England is a disappointment, all the houses wood or brick or stone, and either decrepit or fabulously, almost carelessly, rich. Charles had gathered from his quick scan of the girl's mind that she was wealthy, but – Erik thinks this as the houses begin to go from merely _spacious_ to _immense_ – the term _wealthy_ might not quite cover it. For his part, Charles doesn't seem to register the mountains of money they're driving by.

The Crestfield looms over the topiaries, a pile of warm honey stone resplendent in the late afternoon light. Here and there gardeners work their patient and invisible magic, fixing perfection that's gone astray. A fountain, its copper seahorses crusted over with green, splashes tranquilly in front of the great front doors of the house – and, Erik discovers when they ring the bell, behind the doors a maid with permanent disapproval etched on her face, and a rigidity that the CIA officials would envy.

"May I help you gentlemen?" Her tone, severe as the black of her uniform, indicates the answer had better be no.

"Hello," Charles says, tone easy and smile much easier. "My name is Doctor – "

"Doctor? You weren't meant to be here until tomorrow," the maid snaps. Erik blinks in surprise; even Charles seems taken aback. The door, only opened slightly, begins to close.

Erik _sees_ the instant when Charles's power curls around her mind like a whip and pulls it into line with his wishes. The smile has returned, the casually polite one that suggests nothing but goodwill for the person who receives it. Behind the smile is whatever process Charles uses to alchemize reluctance to willingness, and the anger again.

"I'm so sorry!" the maid says with an abrupt gasp. "I suppose I'd misheard Her Ladyship; I thought you were to come tomorrow."

"A last-minute change," Charles says easily. "My partner and I spoke to – Her Ladyship about it. She must not have passed the message on."

"Oh, of course," the maid says, frowning. After a moment her expression clears. "If you would please come inside, Doctor? I'll have the countess and Miss Braddock called in directly."

She opens the door all the way and stands to the side to let them in. Her gesture admits them to a foyer that, Erik thinks, must shock even Charles with its opulence. He himself knows wealth, has blended into expensive suits and the knowledge of fine wine and even finer women and men, but money has always been a resource for him, a tool – a weapon, almost as effective, sometimes, as his power to bend others to his will. It's never been for this, for permanent display – _and at a summer cottage no less_ , Charles cuts in telepathically, sounding distinctly unimpressed. Erik tries to smooth the surprise from his mind and replace it with idle appreciation for the thick rug on the floor, the paintings (all masters, all probably original), striped marble of the pillars. A Greek urn – classical, Erik's quick eye tells him, the real deal – sits almost idly in the shadows near an ebony umbrella stand, as though placed there as an afterthought.

"If you'll come through," the maid says, indicating they should follow her, a supplementary glare to warn them to keep their hands to themselves. Any one of the objects Erik sees could finance his pursuit of Shaw for a year, for five. A brush of amusement from Charles says not to think about it. Erik obediently focuses on the hallway, which runs through a screen of rare plants down to an open door, a portico, and beyond that a collection of well-dressed people on the lawns, as decorative as the plants and paintings.

And as useful, Erik thinks. The acoustics of the hallway amplify the chatter of guests on the porch, all of it empty.

Under Charles's influence or not, the maid hustles them through the atrium and off to the side, down a hallway marginally less ornate than the atrium. Erik allows himself a certain bitter humor, one he knows Charles shares. They're to be shunted out of the way, relegated to – as it turns out – a library where, Charles observes in quiet despair, no one goes or has gone. The maid opens the door to a dusty gloom and turns on a few lights, enough to gild the edges of old books, the trim on a prancing Rococo table. It's a piece of Europe transplanted to the New World, right out of the nineteenth century. A book on another side table, a natural history of some county in England, suggests the collection hasn't been much added to.

The library has an air of unbroken stillness to it, the kind not even two men on the verge of changing the world can rupture. Despite the reassurance of old light and gentility, Erik positions himself so he can keep an eye on the doors, the one they'd come through and another one on the far side of the room, probably leading to a parlor or lounge of some sort. Charles tosses a look at Erik, one that might be amused, or might be fond, or any of a dozen other things Erik refuses to inspect too closely. Sighing, Charles looks away and picks up the natural history book.

"How can you read at a time like this?" Erik snaps.

"Very easily," Charles says. The glance he offers Erik is almost worse than being ignored completely. "Don't worry: the maid has duly reported our presence to her employer, and I've suggested to the mother that it's quite possible she wrote down the incorrect date in her diary. The young lady in question will be with us shortly."

"We could, of course, circumvent all of this…" Erik waves an impatient hand, " _ceremony_ and simply ask _the young lady_ directly. You could." _We could have our answer and get on with what we should actually be doing: killing Shaw _, is what he means.__

__"I could, but I won't," Charles says, with enough mischief – almost – to provoke Erik into flinging one of the candelabra at him._ _

__Charles flips idly through his book for a few more minutes, tapping his foot absently. Erik stews in his corner, and for distraction feels out the myriad bits of metal in the room, on Charles (zipper, tie clip, watch, buttons on his waistcoat), in the house beyond. Nursing his irritation into anger sharpens the peculiar sight-feel-sense (Charles is _right_ , damn him, he can't describe it) enough that he can sense a starfield of silver, gold, and platinum dancing outside. A garden party, he supposes, rich and overfed humans unsuspecting of what real power is._ _

__"You have," Charles says idly, still apparently absorbed in his book, " _the_ most one-track mind, my friend."_ _

__The approach of one of those stars, rich silver like a caress across the back of Erik's neck, saves him from having to reply. A moment later, the door opens._ _

__"So you're the unexpected visitors." The young woman's voice is smooth, controlled, and almost mocking. Charles, almost as if he can’t be bothered despite driving all the way up here, needs a moment to look up from his book._ _

__Elisabeth Braddock is a sylph of a girl, the skirt of her evening dress swishing around her legs, the fabric transparent enough and the light clear enough to hint at the long run of thigh and calf. Expensive sandals mold themselves to her instep. She moves like a dancer. And, inevitably, she catches Erik looking. From the couch, Charles snickers and stands up._ _

__The introductions are quick, they have the script by now. Elisabeth, like Charles earlier, is deeply unimpressed and takes few pains to conceal it._ _

__"So, good doctors," she says as she folds herself into a corner of the sofa, "which problem are you here about?" Her dark eyes fix on Charles, who gazes tranquilly back. His expression sits somewhere between clinical detachment and fascination. Erik knows what it's like, being watched by those keen blue eyes, and he watches Betsy Braddock discover the sensation for herself. She pulls at the thin shawl wrapped around her shoulders and, pride ruffled for the first time, looks away._ _

__"Problems?" Charles asks, seeming to stress the plural. Erik knows enough by now to know that Charles is somewhat surprised._ _

__"You're the counselors, aren't you? The shrinks?" She offers them a bitter smile. "I figure Mother's brought you here about the crazy daughter who thinks she can see the future, or the crazy daughter who believes she's in love with another girl."_ _

___That_ rocks Charles for a moment. "We didn't know – "_ _

__"I was a devotee of Sappho?" Elisabeth smiles – thin, unhappy. If anything, her admission only seems to deepen Charles's anger. "That's what most people seem to find more shocking. There isn't much to say, Doctor, beyond ' I met her in Paris, fell in love, and when she discovered it my mother exiled me here, and has been bombarding me with suitors ever since.'"_ _

__"I see." Charles's voice has gone very quiet, weighted with a tone Erik's never heard from him. "If it is any comfort to you, my Lady, we don't consider that in need of… of _treatment._ "_ _

__"Nor, for that matter, do we regard your ability as an illness," Erik adds._ _

__"My ability," Elisabeth repeats, staring at the two of them incredulously. "Why would you even…"_ _

___Because we're like you_ , Charles says, projecting so that Erik can hear as well. It's his cue; Erik picks up a small silver-chased ball from a basket of ridiculous decorations nearest him and rotates it like a wandering planet._ _

__The expression on the young Elisabeth's face is _most_ satisfying, all blank-eyed shock and graceless disbelief. Her huge dark eyes dart back and forth between Erik and Charles and her jeweled fingers grip her skirts tightly enough so her already-pale hands go bloodless. Her gaze is riveted to the two of them, mouth working around words she isn't able to find._ _

__"Quite a lovely trick, isn't it?" Charles asks. He's smiling his pleased, mischievous smile, but underneath the delight something darker lurks. Erik half-wants to poke at it and draw it out of its lair. "You can see, my Lady, why we don't view your gift as a defect, or a sign of some disorder."_ _

__"I." Elisabeth coughs. "I didn't – this is not me finally going 'round the bend, is it? You really did speak in my head. And you," she turns to Erik, "are really, at this very minute, making that thing float."_ _

__Erik obligingly sends the ball over to orbit Elisabeth's head. Wonderingly she reaches to touch it; Erik jerks it away before she can, and Elisabeth jumps._ _

__"Oh my god," she says, amazement transfiguring her voice so it's almost warm. "I can't believe… so it's true, then? I can actually see the future."_ _

___Of course, my dear_ , Charles sends, reassurance on top and that intriguing darkness beneath. _What have you seen so far?__ _

__"Nothing much," Elisabeth admits. "I saw one of my classmates at university was going to be hurt in a car crash, I saw the face of the girl I knew I'd love for the rest of my life, that sort of thing. Not much more than you would get from any fortune-teller, I'd wager."_ _

___But still extraordinary_ , Charles says, with a meaningful look for Erik, who can only think of what Elisabeth might see if she were properly trained – if she'd see the fulfillment of his dream, or its dissolution. "We've come to ask you if you might be interested in exploring the true scope of your powers along with a few other specially-selected individuals."_ _

__"You mean there are more?" Elisabeth sits up straight. "Other than just the two of you?"_ _

__"There are many more of us out there," Charles is, of course, beginning the first part of his spiel. "I, Charles Xavier, am a telepath; my friend Erik Lehnsherr is a metallokinetic, meaning he can manipulate metal and magnetic fields. And there are others, like my sister, who is a shapeshifter, and another young woman with the most magnificent wings. A girl who can control the weather, a boy with superhuman agility… So many."_ _

__"So I would be a schoolgirl again," Elisabeth says, her lips twisting. "What's the catch?"_ _

__"The _catch_ ," Erik says, stepping forward to offer her a card with a direct line to Charles's offices, "is that you will help us track down and eliminate a murderer and terrorist."_ _

__Elisabeth doesn't accept it, frowning at him to indicate he's encroaching on her territory. "And that's the price for getting me out of here, going into combat? I'm sorry, gentlemen, but that hardly seems altruistic of you."_ _

__"Do you want to live your life surrounded by utter uselessness?" Erik growls, gesturing so the forgotten ball flies across the room to embed itself in the richly textured wallpaper. Elisabeth stares at it, too shocked to be outraged. "Charles may try to appeal to common decency," he says that with the scorn it deserves, which earns him a silent rebuke from Charles, "but we both know it won't work. Don't you want to be away from this? Away from a ridiculous woman who thinks your preferences and your abilities are _diseases_ that need curing?"_ _

__If he'd been in her place, Erik knows, he would have left right away. ( _If you'd been in the place of any of our failed recruits, you would have left_ , Charles says.) He can't imagine what could possibly keeping her here, aside from a misguided devotion to a pile of rocks and artwork. To her credit, the girl draws herself up and eyes Erik frostily, unwarmed by his anger or his appeal._ _

__"I won't be used by any government," Elisabeth says at last, "and certainly not a government that also sees my _preferences_ as an illness, or an object of titillation. I'd hardly be able to live more openly in a government compound than here, would I?"_ _

___She's frightened_ , Charles says, his mental voice clipped and more openly angry now that he's addressing Erik only, _and she's also right. The world is not much kinder to those whose tastes don't run the way it feels they ought than it is to anyone who's different. We're not going to win this.__ _

__Erik thinks of his own _tastes_ , which he's hardly had time to develop. A frisson of anger races through him – Charles's, he realizes abruptly, stunned by the utter purity of it._ _

__"You should know," Charles says, perfectly civil and British, a dapper match to Elisabeth's elegance, "that the opportunity will remain open, if you choose to reconsider. But you should know that you ought to be valued for who and what you are. I hope you realize that."_ _

__"If I ever feel the need to give up wealth and comfort to aid a world power by reading Tarot cards, I shall contact you directly." Elisabeth takes the card at last and, without looking at it, tucks it into the purse at her side. She doesn't acknowledge Charles's words; when she stands, it's with a practiced grace that makes Erik briefly sorry for her refusal. "If that will be all, I'm expected outside, and I'm sure my mother would welcome your report of my good health."_ _

__"Of course." Charles stands, all polite good breeding, to acknowledge her departure. He tilts his head in the direction of the door, indicating that Erik should follow him – but should go behind Elisabeth. He holds the door open for her and lets Erik through as well._ _

__The woman waiting outside for them has Elisabeth's look, and a sort of fluttery impatience that settles the instant the door opens. She shoos Elisabeth back out to the party, which her daughter permits with a muttered "yes, Mother," and a backward glance at Erik and Charles, one filled with a peculiar longing._ _

__"Ah, doctors." Lady Beatrice is much like her daughter, austerely slim and dressed to show it. "I trust the interview went well? It was… quite short." Her eyes narrow with skepticism. "I hope you can cure her of this nonsense."_ _

__"No difficulty, I assure you." Charles's tone is pleasant, neutrally professional. Under it, anger runs like a vein of fire, the same one that had kindled earlier in their talk with Elisabeth. "But, my Lady, I'm somewhat at a loss as to what the problem _is_."_ _

__Lady scowls. "I thought you've spoken with her, Doctor. About the – the _future_?" Her voice drops to a whisper. "Her friend?" The jeweled hands gesture for emphasis._ _

__"Oh that." Charles shrugs dismissively, turns the shrug into a casual finger at his temple. "Mere psychosomatic complaints – symptoms, if you will, of another problem that will be cured when the underlying cause is addressed. While my partner and I spoke with your daughter, we determined she is suffering from a mild depression."_ _

__"Oh, of _course_ she's depressed!" exclaims Lady Beatrice, straightening suddenly. She misses Charles's terrible glare, the anger drawing his shoulders tight. "It's only natural she should be missing her friends, and we come to the States so rarely; she knows so few people here. She's homesick. I don't know why I didn't realize it."_ _

__"I'm sure you were just keeping her best interests in mind," Charles says thinly. The pleasantness has leached from his smile, but Lady Beatrice is oblivious to it._ _

__"Still, she should go home at the nearest opportunity," Erik adds. Lady Beatrice starts as though surprised someone else is in the room – she is, Erik realizes, with her mind riveted to Charles's – and, in a monotone, she agrees._ _

__"If that is all," Charles tugs on his jacket and indicates that Erik should do the same, "Lady Beatrice, it has been a pleasure speaking with your lovely daughter. We are both confident a change of scenery would do her good, and we hope to hear confirmation of it once she's back in England."_ _

__"You most certainly shall have it." Lady Beatrice beams at them both and then, surprisingly, attaches herself to Charles's arm. Charles glances from where their arms are linked to Lady Beatrice's face, to Erik, back to Lady Beatrice again. "Doctors, in exchange for your services, may I ask you to stay for the party? Nothing much, but you must be hungry coming out so late in the day…"_ _

__"English hospitality," Charles murmurs. "I thank you, my Lady, but Dr. Lehnsherr and I must be going."_ _

__He disengages his arm with considerably less finesse and politeness than he usually displays. Erik can't help the twitch of amusement, the grin; Charles catches it of course, _What is so funny?_ projected at him with a shortness that says Charles isn't flustered so much as furious, and it would be wise not to press him. Erik doesn't need to be a telepath to read that._ _

____

* * *

"Well, that was a waste of time," Erik growls once they're back in their hotel.

Charles has tired of CIA austerity as well – had tired of it fairly quickly, actually – and so the room they're in is almost hedonistically luxurious, more gilt and porcelain than should have a right to exist, and expensive sheets underneath a silky coverlet. A room service menu bound in calfskin sits on a chair that prances in place next to the settee that Charles has collapsed into.

"Pressuring her would not have worked," Charles says softly, but with an edge. "She thinks she knows her own mind. Going with us would have exposed her in ways she's not ready for yet."

"You mean she's not desperate enough. Even if she can't be open about who and what she is, she'll have money and privilege to fall back on." _The way I didn't._

"I could hardly take that from her." Charles's eyes are still their spectacular blue, although they're framed by tension. "And her money and position will at least protect her, which is far less than we can say about Angel or Alex."

"You don't sound reassured by that at all," Erik observes. He moves to stand by the wall, the one with the view of both the door and the window that looks out onto a lush, well-tamed garden. "And I noticed you didn't have the same compunction about persuading her mother there's nothing wrong with her daughter."

"Eventually she'll remember she thinks her daughter is crazy, and she'll hate that her daughter is a lesbian." Charles's jaw has gone tense again; he's barely-contained, vicious energy against the damask of the sofa. "Absent… extraordinary measures, the mind will always find its way back to what it wants to believe." He toys with the hotel keyfob, the brass keys jangling against the surface of Erik's ability. "By the time that happens, though, Elisabeth should be financially secure. The Lady Beatrice Braddock – " he invests the woman's title and name with scorn " – is an extraordinarily suggestible person."

"So Elisabeth will have a period of freedom that she never would have had otherwise, and then everything will be the way it was before," Erik says sarcastically.

"No," Charles snaps. "Elisabeth will have months or years to grow and discover her own strength. By the time her mother remembers she should hate her daughter's lesbianism, Elisabeth will have grown so far beyond her, her disapproval won't matter. And," he draws breath to say something that, from the tension in his shoulders, will cost him, "I _could_ change Lady Beatrice's mind. I could, quite literally, change it if I wanted to rip it off its very foundations and replace it with something utterly of my own making."

"Then that should prove my point." Charles is the most infuriating thing in his life. Shaw is a quiet, low- and long-burning source of anger; Charles actively irritates him. "Down at their core, humans hate and fear us, and there's no changing that, not without force."

"If you honestly think I would _ever_." The anger Erik senses is like a large animal, something brought to bay and turning on him, ready to fight its way out if it has to. "If you think that, Erik, you know very little about what telepathy truly is."

"Why don't you show me then?" Erik goads.

"Anger," Charles breathes, "is a terrible thing."

He can't move. That's the first thing he registers when he tries to straighten and take advantage of the few inches' height he has on Charles. His body simply _will not move_. His chest rises and falls with his breathing, but that's it. Even his eyes are held open, tearing with wanting to blink.

"Do you like it, Erik?" Charles asks. He slides to his feet, those warm blue eyes of his cold and calculating now. It's worse, Erik thinks dully, than Schmidt looking down at him; at least he'd known not to expect any kindness from that face. "This, of course, is only the beginning."

 _What do you mean?_ Erik wants to ask. Of course he can't; he can't even swallow, the saliva building uncomfortably in the back of his mouth. And it's only when Charles permits him to swallow, his grip slackening momentarily on Erik's hindbrain, that he feels it.

It's something warm, foreign, starting between his legs, a pool rising up through his gut and spreading in tributaries through his nerves and veins. It's slow, it's insidious, not quite foreign because it's also a part of him – the part that registers the fine cut of Charles's face and his soft hair, the hands that sketch out an impossible future and look strong enough to carry it out, the way his hips turn and the glimpses of plush, delectable arse when he wears a specific pair of trousers ...

"Very flattering," Charles says, absolutely delighted and now very close.

Erik tries to fight back that desire, the ache that's now firmly settled in his groin, and fixes Charles with a glare. Charles looks right back.

"Imagine," Charles says idly, playing with the metal of Erik's belt buckle. He can _feel_ it, god help him, but even his power is utterly beyond him – as beyond him, Erik thinks with a flash of panic so sharp it cuts through desire before desire resolves itself again, as it had been that day when he'd been a frightened boy in the office of the devil.

As if he hasn't just registered every iota of Erik's terror, Charles continues. "I could strip you power from you," he says, and Erik's buckle presses into the leather of the belt, Charles using his hand to slide the tongue up and off the prong, but appropriating Erik's power again to tug the buckle and pull the belt through the loops of his trousers. "I could, if I wanted, make you forget you ever had it. You might never know what that ache in you means, why it feels like you're missing something… Or I could make it so you never knew you had it in the first place."

"Why don't you then?" Erik asks flatly. His own anger, his trusted companion, is locked away down deep, away from the ability it feeds.

"Then I could strip every memory from you. Would you like that?" Charles's eyes are so blue, wide and innocent above that painted mouth. He touches Erik's cheek, very gently. _I could give you peace, you know. A life free of the pain visited on you – no anger, no mission, only endless, perfect tranquility._

His entire body is _yearning_ towards Charles now, pining for him, missing his touch as if Erik's ever actually had it. And now there's a voice whispering up from the back of his skull, asserting itself and growing louder, asking him to forget, it's fine, all will be well, there's only Charles and _he will make it well, just come, come down, fade –_

 _I don't want this_ , Erik thinks desperately, begging Charles to hear him. He clings with everything in him to the fading scraps of himself, thinks bizarrely of their conversation earlier – metaphysical fingers clawing into the bits and pieces of his identity. _Please, Charles._

Abruptly the world is right again. His bones and muscles go liquid all at once, so Charles has to catch him (surprisingly strong, Erik thinks muzzily) and help him over to the bed.

"Do you see now why I won't do what you want?" Charles asks. He's brisk and efficient with pulling off Erik's boots and tossing them on the ridiculous, flowery rug. "My anger, Erik… once it's loose, it won't stop. It won't stop with you and I…" Charles swallows, his arrogance melting as he grips Erik's ankle. "I couldn't bear it, if you weren't you anymore. And that's why anger is such a terrible thing. I've got to keep it in check, or else."

Slowly, Erik's breath steadies and his heart stops galloping. His own anger tries to well up – Charles had violated him, dug up the deepest, most cherished memories he'd held and tried to root them out, had looked into his mind and seen _everything_ – but the rest of him is too tired to sustain it. He hears Charles rummaging around in their bags, his footsteps quiet as he returns to the table with – Erik squints – a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water he's filled up in the bathroom.

"You'll have a rather cruel headache later," Charles apologizes as Erik swallows the bitter tablets. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He wants to sleep for a year, and damn Schmidt.

"I will be," Charles counters. He slides into the other bed, very close to Erik and very far away all at once. The vestige of longing for Charles to be in bed with him is not something that Charles put there, but Erik senses Charles's reluctance to act on it anyway.

"Free will isn't only something for philosophers," Charles says very quietly. Erik shuts his eyes, not that it would ever stop Charles from talking, and tries not to jump every time he thinks his body's slid out of his control again.

 _Forcing the world to change will never work_ , Charles tells him, his telepathic voice infinitely gentle. _You'll only get something hideous and malformed, and not what you wanted at all, and the cost would be everything._

Erik's used to paying whatever price is necessary, and forcing others to pay that price, but this – he thinks of that moment of dissolution, looking over the edge into not-being and the perfect awareness that he stood in front of living death with its sweet blue eyes – would be too much to charge.

Charles withdraws from his head at that, apparently satisfied, and leaves Erik to his pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god only five more days to go. Five. More. Days.


	26. Mr. A.E. Stark's amazing ingenious Telectroscope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik Lehnsherr held his ground despite the jostling crowd. With considerable irritation, he watched as Mayor Gilroy bustled across the pavilion, his fluffed-up mustache protruding as if determined to lead the way. Behind the mayor, draped in red, white, and blue, the telectroscope lay silent, its great eye blank and blind and staring into the distance at the Natural History Museum on the other side of Eighth Avenue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all. Unfortunately I've run into a snare with writing every day. It's not writer's block or lack of enthusiasm, it's repetitive strain. My new working situation is basically whatever the exact opposite of "ergonomically correct" is, and after a day of work there is no amount of painkiller in the world that can get me in a place where it doesn't hurt to type. So the spirit is still very willing, but the body needs a break. With any luck I'll be able to devise a new arrangement, but until then, I'll be over here whimpering quietly and massaging my wrists.
> 
> I'm one ergonomically-correct keyboard away from being Wesley Gibson.
> 
> Anyway, this fic is based on a very ancient idea from a few fandoms ago, and incorporates a few conceits from 'The changeling'-verse, although it does not take place in that 'verse as such. Notes about it are at the end.
> 
> Pairing: pre-Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Tony Stark, Natasha Romanova, Steve Rogers, Raven, various historical figures  
> Warnings: none as such  
> Advertisements: what Wikipedia tells me is "Teslapunk", things that never actually happened historically happen in this fic, falling in love from thousands of miles away

**Mr. A.E. Stark's amazing ingenious Telectroscope**

Erik Lehnsherr held his ground despite the jostling crowd. With considerable irritation, he watched as Mayor Gilroy bustled across the pavilion, his fluffed-up mustache protruding as if determined to lead the way. Behind the mayor, draped in red, white, and blue, the telectroscope lay silent, its great eye blank and blind and staring into the distance at the Natural History Museum on the other side of Eighth Avenue.

Half of New York swirled about him, the society dames not above rubbing elbows with the demi-monde (when they failed to obtain a seat by the stage, at any rate), and the workers who smelled of the docks and butcheries and stables standing unself-consciously by the sides of neatly-pressed clerks and businessmen. Tourists, many of whom had come specifically for the Great Connection and the celebration of the day, only added to the congestion. Beyond them – Erik reached out with the invisible fingers of his ability – the endless steel- and coal-driven heartbeat of the city had, very nearly, frozen.

Gilroy raised his hands for silence, which earned a few resentful catcalls. Politics – Gilroy was, of course, a Tammany man – would hardly be set aside today, despite Gilroy seeing the opening of a project that had begun sixteen years ago, and one every New Yorker (save, Erik thought, himself) looked forward to with nearly religious fervor. As far as Erik could discern, everyone waiting in the packed streets and vast green spaces of Central Park wore something to do with the American flag – a bit of blue ribbon on a hat or a scarlet handkerchief in a pocket.

He wondered what they would think if they'd known a changeling – _adaptive_ was now the terminology, he thought sarcastically – had been the one to lay the wires for the telectroscope across the Atlantic. Never mind, of course, that the changeling was German and, as if that were not enough, a Jew in the bargain.

"Ah, Lehnsherr, I thought I heard you brooding over Gilroy's pontificating."

"Tony," Erik said civilly. "I would have thought you to be up there," he indicated the pavilion, where Gilroy was rapt up in his speech about the value of the American laborer, "rather than down here with the rest of us lot."

"I would have said the same thing about you." Tony peered at him knowingly, which spared Erik from having to point out that he loathed spectacle and found the scrutiny of more than five people at a time unendurable. Erik scowled anyway. "Perhaps if you go up, Mr. Gilroy will stop talking and we can contact London."

Anthony Edward Stark had money and brains, and if it had not been for the brains – which preferred engineering to politics – he would have consolidated his family's power long ago. Erik supposed it was just as well; Stark was unbearable enough without adding a mayoralty or commissariat into the mix, and Erik should never have gone into partnership with the man if he hadn't been the president of one of the world's great engineering firms.

Lehnsherr and Stark had brought _this_ into being, at least. Erik allowed himself a moment of satisfaction, untainted by Gilroy strutting about (now the man was shaking hands with some of the city fathers) and the self-congratulation fairly pouring off the financiers who had provided some of the project's capital.

 _This_ , of course, was the Telectroscope. It ran on the same principles explored by Mr. Senlecq and Mr. Carey, in its use of selenium as the agent used to propagate light into images, but with the grandiosity and mad genius of Stark himself. In the manner that had characterized most of Tony's more ambitious designs, the prototype in the Stark laboratories had become two _screens_ (the original term had been _canvas_ , but Tony had thought that "primitive") linking Tony's office and Erik's in the company's Manhattan building, and then a plan to connect a few buildings around the city, before finally leaping from its chrysalis as _I say, Lehnsherr, what do you think about talking face-to-face with the nice chaps in London?_

That had (also of course) necessitated scaling up the production of the cables necessary to transmit both images and sound, which had led to Erik spending much more time with the fabricators and technicians than he had imagined. Tony had attempted to cheer him on by reminding Erik of the accolades sure to come their way, the immeasurable benefit such a connection would confer upon humanity: from the green peace of Central Park everyday New Yorkers could take in lectures by English intellectuals, or see a play if nothing in the city's theater district sufficed, or learn the news of London's day first-hand.

"Programs!" Tony had said late one night – or, Erik thought now, after night had crossed over the bridge into morning. "Imagine it, Erik: each hour, or each half-hour, could be devoted to a different topic. Americans could learn to play cricket, or listen to the news fresh from Europe, or… or learn about botany. And we, in turn, could educate the English about baseball. Whatever you can imagine."

At the time, Erik had been tangled up in copper wiring and had not wanted to imagine anything. Tony's inducements rarely found themselves effective, anyway, at least when they appealed to Erik's charitable side, a side which even Miss Romanova praised as being more atrophied than her own.

Now, Tony had abandoned him, Erik saw, and pushed his way through the crowd to his place on the podium. His friend Mr. Rogers had joined him, Mr. Rogers whose primary function seemed to be annoying Tony with his optimism and, occasionally, deflecting bullets or bludgeons hurled by resentful competitors, while Natasha Romanova spent a great deal of her time ensuring that irregularities in her life and Tony's were filed away to smoothness. Where, precisely, Tony had dug him up Erik had no idea; Tony seemed to collect, or at least attract, unaccountably strange individuals.

"Ah, our Tony is in his element, I see." Think of the devil, Erik thought, and she appears; Natasha Romanova materialized at his elbow, self-contained and yet somehow ominous in her black dress and black lace dark at her throat. "Do you think he'll spend all day congratulating himself, or do you think he'll turn the damn thing on before nightfall?"

"London is some hours ahead of us," Erik said, "but if he doesn't give it a rest, I'm going home."

"And miss your triumph?" Miss Romanova said silkily. Under her red hair, her eyes – also dark, rather astonishing – fixed on Erik. "I wouldn't have thought you content to be a footnote, Mr. Lehnsherr."

"I'm not terribly interested in posturing." That had been Schmidt's specialty, and what, along with his casual cruelty to a child given into his care and the grinding domination of the Empire, had driven him to leave Germany in the first place. "But I will be up there, one way or another."

He'd laid every foot of that cable himself, very nearly, from the cables in Trafalgar to the coast, across the Irish Sea and then overland again to Cahereamore and then weeks on a steamer plowing across the Atlantic, his power guiding the cables down, down into the depths until they rose up again into the light near Cape Sable, and then down down down again until the cables ran up the East River and onto dry land for the last time and came to their home on Fifth Avenue. Then it had been wiring them into the screen apparatus, which had been like knitting lace with gossamer after exercising himself with miles of cabling, and conferring by telegraph – laborious, ridiculous process – with their counterparts in London. The young man in charge of the English side of things, an improbably young individual by the name of Henry McCoy, had been a pair of unsteady hands to which to entrust their reputations, but Tony had said something about "unplumbed depths" and insisted.

"Ah, it looks like they're starting," Miss Romanova said. "At last."

Tony, as expected, had thoroughly insinuated himself into the proceedings – and, Erik saw, in front of the control panel, much to the irritation of Mayor Gilroy and his mustache. By the ticking gears in the heart of his pocket watch, Erik knew the hour was drawing close to one, the appointed time for the first connection.

"Are you quite sure you don't want to be up there, Mr. Lehnsherr?" Miss Romanova murmured.

"Quite," Erik said, and ignored the voice that said it would wish otherwise. From the front ranks of engineers and scientists who had worked on the project, he could see Tony's hands darting over the panel, pushing levers and pressing the button that activated the main power. The telectroscope whined as the great generators rumbled to life, their pulse tangible and audible to Erik despite their intombment deep under Central Park. Behind him, the crowd caught its breath.

"Shall we have a countdown?" Tony shouted. Mayor Gilroy's mustache twitched, but he indicated with his hand that the crowd should start counting.

As the massed voices reached _one_ , Tony pulled down the lever that would initiate reception.

Erik _felt_ the electricity rushing through every copper and iron tendril of the thing, racing along it as potent as life itself, infusing every vein and nerve, its path flawless and uninterrupted at every turn. By now the generators had fully powered up, and the screen went blinding white, drawing appreciatively anxious gasps from the audience. All they needed now, Erik thought, was for the Londoners on the other side to hold up their end, for Dr. McCoy to not fall flat on his face – and there was space for that; he'd _known_ one of them should have stayed as Stark Industries' representative in London, to make sure everything went smoothly. Rogers, maybe, even though he entertained strange notions about the British and sometimes talked of Sir Henry Clinton as if he bore the man a personal grudge.

Slowly, slowly, figures resolved as if through a fog previously impenetrable, silhouetted in faint grey lines and then, as the filters stabilized and the signal strengthened, into washed-out color: the gray of the terrace leading up to the National Gallery and a few wisps of the fountain behind. But before them stood ten men and three women, one of them resplendent in white, the other manifestly – defiantly, Erik saw, with a burst of admiration, an adaptive, her blue skin displayed proudly underneath her summer dress.

"Greetings to our trans-Atlantic cousins!" boomed one of the men, by the seal on his chest Mayor Gilroy's counterpart. "I trust we are coming through loud and clear?"

"As crystal!" Tony said, before Mayor Gilroy could open his mouth.

The crowd burst into applause behind them, and the sound of it broke hard against Erik's ears. Their counterparts on the other side of the world also began to clap, the sound tinny and distorted through the speakers.

* * *

As one of the major contributors to the project – his name had been engraved into the brass casing alongside Tony's, _THE FIRST TELECTROSCOPE. MDCCCXCIII. STARK AND LEHNSHERR LLC_ , and had been given in the paper as "Mr. Erik Lehnsherr, a German immigrant, who engineered the innovative design of the cables and supervised the process by which they made their way from our English relations across the Atlantic to our very own Central Park, where they will have their permanent home in its leafy bowers and welcoming shade." An additional perk, of which Miss Romanova took full advantage by sliding one of her arms in his, was the right to be among the first to step up to the telectroscope and address the people standing on the other side.

The sky, muddy as it was by the imperfect signal and filters – they would need to perfect those, Erik thoughts absently – was still light, a reminder of the length of summer days at those latitudes. The Mayor of Westminster had wandered off to a table that rested in the margin of the screen and could be seen drinking copiously from a crystal goblet. A few members of Parliament and someone who, Miss Romanova whispered to him, was the Duke of Somewhereshire, chatted with Mr. Rogers, apparently quite overcome by his "Americanness." Erik saw the changeling girl, hanging on the arm of a young man whose face he couldn't see and laughing at something Erik had missed.

Something would have to be done about the sound too, Erik told himself. The receivers they had used were larger versions of those used on conventional phones – barely a step above hanging a phone by the side of the screen and having a person wishing to communicate with the telectroscope talking into it. At least the lack of distance prevented him from picking up too much of the impatient hum of the crowd in the background, thousands of Londoners all pressing eagerly for their chance to see America.

"Quite amazing," Miss Romanova said, even sounding as if she meant it. She disengaged herself from Erik's elbow and went over to say something to Tony who was, predictably, also by the drinks table.

Alone, Erik had no idea what to say. He simply _looked_ , at the white pile of stone that was the Gallery, with St. Martin's standing shoulder-to-shoulder with it, and a sea of faces all trained on him. Most of them were blurry due to the poor resolution, but the ones closer were surprisingly clear, the color only half-saturated as it was, allowed him still to catch the sheen of silk in a tie against a formal black coat, the blue girl's aqueous skin and slick reddish hair, and then – suddenly, blue eyes whose clarity even three thousand miles could not diminish.

"I say," said the young man – the young man attached to the changeling girl's arm, "hello there."

"Hello," Erik said hoarsely.

"It – this is, well," the young man beamed at him. It was impossible to fix his age; something about the eyes suggested at least three decades, but the smile directed at Erik now should not have been possible on anything but a youthful face. "The wonders of the modern world, eh?"

"Not so wondrous when you've half-drowned yourself, laying the cables that make it happen."

"You're Erik Lehnsherr, of course!" the young man said, stepping closer to the screen, as if to shake Erik's hand. "I wish we could have met when you were in London last. Unfortunately I was detained in Oxford and could not be present."

Erik frowned. "I don't recall you ever being associated with the project."

"Oh, only in a very peripheral way; my interests run towards the biological, rather than the technical," the young man said dismissively, which earned a distinctly indelicate snort from his companion. "Raven," he said, enough of a tsk in his voice to be patronizing, which the changeling brushed off with the impatience it deserved. "But, if Raven insists… I'm Charles Xavier, Mr. Lehnsherr, and it is _such_ a pleasure to meet you. And this," Xavier added with a wince as the changeling girl dug her elbow into his ribs, "is my lovely, patient sister, Raven."

Well, that would explain why he'd been on the English side of the platform: _THE XAVIER FOUNDATION_ stood first on the list of donors whose capital had helped get the project past Stark Industries' Board of Directors. Erik had never bothered to inquire after the exact amounts donated – he had been paid for time and materials, which was what mattered – but the papers had reported on the amount needed to fund the telectroscope's construction and operation, and it had not been small. Neither had been the Xavier Foundation's contribution.

He was probably dealing with Charles Junior, Erik reckoned; there had to be someone older, someone old enough to be in charge of the amount of money that had been couriered directly to Tony's office.

"Signing that check was the easiest thing I've ever done," Xavier was saying with undiminished enthusiasm, as if he hadn't noticed Erik's distraction. "Do you remember, Raven, when Stephen first brought the project to our attention?"

"You wouldn't stop talking about it for a week," Raven said dryly. "How could I possibly forget?"

"This device," Xavier said, ignoring his sister – his sister, Erik told himself with a bit of reluctant relief – "is bound to change the world. Only think about how we could address our differences, the differences that turn nation against nation, if only we could speak face to face and see that what separates us should not be cause for acrimony or fear! The power to educate, to _change_ – we, like all species, were made to adapt, and what better way to adapt than to see all the variety of the world spread out before us, and fix ourselves to meet its demands, and change ourselves for the better?"

"He said almost the same thing to Mr. Rogers," Raven sighed. Her eyes were very yellow, transformed by the telectroscope's filters to the deep, burnished color of gold leaf. "Do you feel the same way, Mr. Lehnsherr?"

"Hardly," Erik snorted. Xavier only laughed.

"I find that amusing," Xavier said once he'd regained himself, "coming from a fellow adaptive."

Erik's own adaptation had been – reluctantly, on the part of the journalists – part of the coverage of the event. "An adaptive, Mr. Lehnsherr is taciturn where he is not hostile," one journalist from Chicago had written, "and where he is not hostile, he is taciturn. Be that as it may, his own adaptation, the gift of manipulating metal and magnetic fields, is uniquely suited to the challenge of laying thousands of miles of cable across the coldest reaches of our Ocean." And the girl, Raven, was clearly and magnificently a fellow adaptive, although if her abilities ran in a direction other than the possession of deeply blue skin, red hair, and yellow eyes, he could not say.

"What can you do?" he asked, curious despite himself.

Xavier's mouth was quite red as he smiled; Erik suspected the color would be spectacular in real life. "You show me yours if I'll show you mine?" he said, lips curled in such a way as to suggest improper things. Erik's suit abruptly felt quite close, the collar snagged around his throat. "Alas, the distance doesn't permit me to demonstrate for you now, but when we see each other in person, truly face to face…"

"You say it as if it's certain," Erik said, tilting his head.

"My friend," Xavier said warmly, standing quite close to his screen now; he placed a hand against it, and Erik, quite against his will but helpless to do otherwise, pressed his own against the glass in turn, and was surprised not to feel the warmth of flesh answering.

"My friend," Xavier said again, "it is quite certain."

* * *

The work on the telectroscope – which, six months later, was still going strong and already funded to run for the next year between various "telectroscopic companies" looking to broadcast their own material to London – had meant a deluge of work for Erik. He welcomed it, unwilling to rest on his laurels or the pile of money that work on the telectroscope had earned him. The flat in Gramercy Park sat mostly unoccupied as Erik spent his days, and most of his nights, in one of his laboratories, Tony's gift to him along with a share in Stark Industries.

If he thought about Charles Xavier in the few moments not given over to whatever ecstasy had caught him up – usually in the blank space between crawling into bed and tumbling down into sleep – he never acknowledged it to himself.

The spanner in the works came, as it inevitably did, in the form of Klaus Schmidt.

"Ah, Erik my lad," Schmidt said, "what a surprise and a pleasure it is to see you here."

Schmidt's voice wore the same pleased superiority it always did, as much armor in its way as Schmidt's own ability. Something cold settled in Erik, formed of the fear a child that still acutely remembered beatings and the price of failure, before his habitual fury surged up like a forest fire, incinerating the fear and everything before it. Schmidt's particular power meant he only aged if he wished it, and so the face he wore now was close to the one Erik still recalled in nightmares, only the fashion of coat and vest changed, gray on gray to match, black tie neatly tacked at Schmidt's throat. Erik ached to draw the pin out and drive it through Schmidt's skull.

They were in the dockyards, Erik's latest project lying at her ease on the wide breast of the water where the Hudson and East River met, the docks of lower Manhattan stretching half-invisible tendrils out towards them. She was a new battleship, her hull reinforced with a metal of Erik's manufacture, her guns among the last Tony would admit to making. The human laborers working on her, sensibly, hurried away towards the stern, leaving the two of them alone on the bow.

"I heard about your triumph with the telectroscope," Schmidt said. "I wish I could have been here to witness it first-hand."

The thought of Schmidt anywhere near the telectroscope – anywhere near any of Erik's creations, or Erik himself – sent Erik's ability flying for the nearest weapon. The _Adamant_ 's anchor lay buried in the mud beneath the harbor, its two prongs dug in deep, but Erik's fury made it an easy weight. He wrenched it up, the chain coiling in on itself and dripping with water and traces of seaweed. Schmidt smiled his huge, white smile – it was the same, precisely the same as when Erik had shivered and begged to be let go and was told _No, no, my child, you must move the coin first_ – and said, "I only came here to speak with you, Erik. To see if you'd finally acknowledged your debt to me."

"My _debt_." The anchor—head raised up like a snake.

"Of course!" The man had the gall to look surprised. "Do you honestly think you would have accomplished any of your great works without my guidance – my tutoring? I gave you the key to unlock your powers, Erik. Of what else could I possibly be speaking?"

"The debt I owe you for taking me away from my parents," Erik said, and gathered himself to strike – to wrap the chain around Schmidt and throw Schmidt and anchor and all over the side, down into the water where Schmidt's power couldn't save him.

"Today is far too nice a day for murder, however deserved," said a strange-familiar voice.

The anchor, entirely without Erik willing it, toppled back into the water with a heavy splash. Schmidt was frozen, staring over Erik's shoulder in disbelief.

Shock – his powers stripped from him, Schmidt paralyzed in front of him – poured over Erik's rage like cold water, as if he'd fallen into the bay himself. The shock was also for the voice, which he knew, even though this time it had none of the distortion of three thousand miles of distance.

"It would be wise," Charles Xavier said as he stood before Schmidt, regarding him closely with blue eyes that were every scrap as vivid as Erik's dreams, "if you were to leave this place and never trouble Erik Lehnsherr again. Otherwise… well, let me say only that I hope I've made myself quite clear about that."

Schmidt, still under the influence of what Erik realized was Charles Xavier himself, nodded stiffly.

Charles smiled. "I'd say 'good man,' but we both know that would be a lie."

Woodenly, Schmidt walked back towards midships where a red-skinned man, a demon complete with tail and incendiary eyes, was waiting for him. No metal on him, Erik realized – his powers had come back within his grasp, along with anger enough to want to pick Xavier up by his cufflinks and throttle him to within an inch of his life, and he was minded to do just that – and he had enough time for that realization alone before the demon reached for Schmidt's arm and the two of them disappeared in a blur of red and black.

"Not a demon of course," Xavier said, his good humor perfectly restored, as if what Erik had just seen had been a mask. "An adaptive, like ourselves… and," and there was that smile again, warm and delighted, enough to soften the edges of Erik's rage, "it is _so_ good to meet you properly, Erik Lehnsherr."

* * *

"That was you," Erik said, once they were in the privacy of the yard supervisor's offices. He had evicted the supervisor, of course, and offered Xavier one of the cleaner chairs, which Xavier had accepted with aplomb. "You were in my head."

"Indeed." Xavier's red mouth shaped itself into a moue of regret. "I would normally have asked permission before being so intrusive, but if something untoward had happened, there would have been witnesses."

"I'm assuming your powers don't stretch to altering memories, then, otherwise there would have been no reason for you to stop me."

"Other than the fact I cannot abide death, even if the one dying will die unlamented?" Xavier blinked those incredible eyes at him. "That is a very compelling reason, although you would be wrong in your assumptions. My powers do, in fact, extend that far. Rather further, if I wished it."

In person Xavier reminded him almost of Tony: short but compact, something about him that refused to be dismissed or overlooked. It was quite apart from Xavier's telepathy, the scope of which Xavier had only hinted at, but being on the receiving end of it – his body held in an unbreakable grip, his will utterly suspended – Erik could, perhaps, begin to guess at it.

"Oh, my friend," Xavier said kindly, "you really can't."

Arrogant, as all rich men were, but a peculiar arrogance. Erik didn't like arrogant people – "Because you're one yourself," Rogers had said once – but Xavier's arrogance shaded more towards pride, the sort that knew itself and was conscious of what stood behind it. That would be power, in Xavier's case, and not just wealth. It lit him up from within and communicated itself across the space between them, as clear to Erik as the forest of metal stretching out across Brooklyn's docklands.

"I told you we'd meet," Xavier continued, clear blue gaze fixed on Erik. "I keep my promises, Erik."

So it was to be first names. "Charles," Erik said slowly, "why, beyond your _promises_ , are you here?"

Charles sat up, leaning forward intently. Erik was forcibly reminded of a student in tutorial, spilling over with enthusiasm to give his answers. "I came, Erik, to see if you would be willing to work with me."

"Work with you?" Erik sat back, unwilling to think about the concession of space to Charles. "I already have a position, you know."

"Of course you do," Charles waved that away. "But this would be… It would be like the telectroscope, not like building guns for nations to hurl shells at each other. It would be a chance to be part of something much bigger than yourself – even Stark Industries, or whatever Schmidt had planned for you. Part of what we, other adaptives, seek."

"What is that?" Erik pressed his fingers into the wooden arms of the chair. They were not comforting. Yearning stretched out, memories multiplied on memories: years of wandering, the strange aloofness that characterized his dealings with Tony, searching for adaptives other than Schmidt but finding them isolated and in their fear unwilling to join him.

Charles's sister, though, had stood in front of two nations as herself, and here Charles was, his telepathy like a cable joining them, absolutely unafraid of his own nature.

 _Changing the world, of course_ , Charles said, smile pressed to the fingers steepled against his lips. _Will you join me?_

"After this project is finished." Erik heard the words as if they'd been spoken by someone else, but knew it was his own volition, his own desire, speaking them, and the buzz of happiness he felt from Charles – very un-British, he thought wryly, to Charles's silent laughter – said that anything less than _Erik_ giving that answer would not have been acceptable.

"In that case," Charles said, getting to his feet and brushing the yard dust off his coat, "I'm staying at the Waldorf – hideously new and expensive, but there you go." He paused, peering at Erik, _into_ him, more properly, and Erik looked straight back, refusing to be afraid. Charles's teeth flashed shiny-white in the electric lights. "When you're done, come and meet me in the lobby, and we'll speak further."

Two hours ago, Erik would have slept at the offices or in the captain's berth of the ship itself, but two hours ago, Charles Xavier had not yet walked across the _Adamant_ 's deck.

"I'll be there," Erik said, and followed Charles with hot and wanting eyes as Charles walked out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 2008, Paul St. George set up [The Telectroscope](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telectroscope), an art installation based on 19th-century inventions (and hoaxes) that were precursors to modern forms of long-distance visual communication. Back when that happened, I had the vague idea to write an SGA fic about it, but the idea never really cohered... until over four years later. I can't believe I routinely forget things like my sunglasses or the one thing I need to get at the grocery store but can remember ridiculous fic ideas from years ago.


	27. Field trip (Telectroscope remix)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most kids at William Blake Day School looked forward to field trips, but most kids weren't in Mr. Shaw’s third-grade gifted class. That meant they didn’t have Mr. Shaw stalking by them as they stood by their bus, barking questions at them. And they weren't even questions like "Did you remember to bring your lunch?" or "Where's your permission slip?", more like "What is the square root of 81?" or "Explain the process of photosynthesis," or some other impossible thing everyone knew for a fact they hadn't covered yet, because as far as Mr. Shaw was concerned, "Only the worthy, those destined to succeed, get to go on field trips."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably weird to write an AU of your own AU but whatever, I do what I want.
> 
> Pairing: pre-Erik/Charles  
> Also starring: Edie Lehnsherr, Mr. Shaw, Emma, Azazel, Janos  
> Warnings: terminally adorable  
> Advertisements: They're all like seven or something, they'd fall in love from a distance but ew cooties, Shaw is a jerkbrain, reunions
> 
> Also, in case you can't tell, one of the things I absolutely adore writing is Shaw when his megalomania is frustrated and confined to a much smaller scale than "destroy the world."

**Field trip (Telectroscope remix)**

Most kids at William Blake Day School looked forward to field trips, but most kids weren't in Mr. Shaw’s third-grade gifted class. That meant they didn’t have Mr. Shaw stalking by them as they stood by their bus, barking questions at them. And they weren't even questions like "Did you remember to bring your lunch?" or "Where's your permission slip?", more like "What is the square root of 81?" or "Explain the process of photosynthesis," or some other impossible thing everyone knew for a fact they hadn't covered yet, because as far as Mr. Shaw was concerned, "Only the worthy, those destined to succeed, get to go on field trips."

Erik had just correctly answered his question – "Spell 'gesticulate'" – and Janos had just gotten his question wrong – "What was the date of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles?" – when Erik's mom put her hand on Janos's shoulder to stop him from trudging inside and said, "Now, Mr. Shaw, all these children already have their permission slips signed for the trip today. It seems a bit unfair to deprive them of a chance to go on a trip with their friends."

"Who said I was interested in being _fair_?" Mr. Shaw said. He looked pretty much how Erik had imagined the devil looked before he met Azazel, with squinty eyes and slicked-back hair and a large mouth full of teeth that smiled the kind of patronizing smile that inspired loathing in seven-year-olds everywhere. At the moment, though, he had traded in his smile for an expression of disbelief at being addressed by a _parent_ (who, according to Mr. Shaw, was "the sort of delusional idiot who thinks they know how to teach because they've never done it"), and Erik's mom showed no sign of backing down. 

"I don’t ask students if they _feel_ like learning," Mr. Shaw blustered as Edie folded her arms across her chest, "I express my expectations that they will, and when they fail to meet up to those expectations…" Edie folded her arms tighter and tapped her foot on the pavement. Erik was starting to get a bit dizzy from the bus fumes.

After a tense moment that involved Mr. Shaw glaring at Erik's mom and twenty-three kids (seven of them had gotten their questions wrong) staring at them both, Mr. Shaw caved.

"Oh, very well!" Mr. Shaw exploded. "You, girl, Miss Salvadore, go get the others, tell them they've been reprieved."

Angel flicked her wings out and buzzed away to the main doors. When she came back, she brought the seven exiled ones with her, all of them flicking anxious looks at Mr. Shaw, who was standing by the open bus door and glowering horribly, and worshipful ones at Erik's mom.

"And to think," she said to Erik, "you didn't want me to come."

" _Mom_ ," Erik hissed. He loved her, of course he did, but not when she was determined to humiliate him. Azazel snickered and hot embarrassment washed over Erik, across his face and down his neck, which of course just made his mom smile fondly and made Azazel's snickers turn into helpless, choked-off giggles.

"No laughing!" Mr. Shaw barked. "This is a field trip, not a field day. We're going to go have a _cultural experience_ ; we're certainly not going to have _fun_. You can have that on your own time. Now everyone get in before I change my mind and have you do power drills for the rest of the day."

* * *

One time when Erik had been about six, he'd watched a bit of a movie his mom said was a grown-up movie as the reason why he had to go back to bed. From the few minutes he'd seen of the movie, Erik had decided that grown-ups could keep the things for themselves.

The movie – Erik remembered this quite clearly, which seemed to amaze his mom for some reason – had been about a man who, according to his mother, had been wrongfully accused and convicted of murder and was going to be sent to prison. Erik had watched mutely as the man sat on the bus that was taking him away to jail, bouncing back and forth with the bad suspension as raggedy and scary-looking men bounced and jostled next to him. When the bus had stopped, the door opened onto a flat, gray-graveled yard with wrought-iron gates that groaned arthritically as a guard pushed them back so the prisoners marched underneath wet, dismal-looking stone.

Bus rides with Mr. Shaw were a lot like that. If they passed another bus, the kids would be leaning across the aisles or over the backs of seats to talk to their friends, waving happily at the passing cars or throwing things, and there'd always be a harassed-looking adult in the back trying to keep the really rowdy kids from blowing the bus up or running off the road. Erik always had the sense that those kids were going some place fun, like Disney World, while Mr. Shaw was secretly planning to cart them off to jail. Or, Erik supposed, juvenile detention, which was where, according to Mr. Shaw, they would all end up if they didn't get it together.

"You're _mutants_ ," he'd say after someone accidentally detonated the fish tank or he caught someone passing notes during science (all Mr. Shaw would teach was biology, specifically about how mutants were evolutionarily superior and going to take over the world). "You're above petty, immature, _primitive_ human behaviors." Then, when someone giggled helplessly, he'd throw up his hands and assign punishment homework or make them sit in study hall, reading _The Mutantfesto_ ( _Manifesto_ was humanist, according to Mr. Shaw) and writing response essays, instead of going out for recess.

Now, Mr. Shaw rode up front with the bus driver, who was hairy and terrifying enough that not even the person in charge of school buses would tell him he couldn't smoke his cigar around kids. Erik's mom, deciding she'd embarrassed him enough for the day, had agreed to sit in the back, where she confiscated Azazel's DS and told him to teach her how to play it. All the other kids, Erik included, sat still and quiet for the thirty minutes it took to get to the Fulton Ferry landing, two to a seat, and stared forward at the strange, hostile silhouette of Mr. Howlett's hair.

Once they were out, Mr. Shaw lined them up to march over to a collection of park benches, two lines of fifteen kids each, a critical eye on the lookout for anyone stepping out of order. Erik slouched mutinously until his mother elbowed him to stand up straight.

"He'd better not make me hold your hand," Emma Frost grumbled at him. "I don't think there's enough hand sanitizer in the world."

"You're the one who has cooties," Erik retorted. " _Human_ cooties." Emma squawked.

"Quiet, or you're going to spend the next three hours in the bus!" Mr. Shaw said menacingly. "Now, this is Miss Uma Thornbottom, and she's going to tell you all about the history of Fulton Ferry and the Brooklyn Bridge, and you're going to listen in case there's a quiz worth twenty percent of your grade at the end."

Erik distracted himself by studying the bridge, which loomed in the near distance, its bulk disappointingly marble and stone on top, but with metal trusses to run his abilities across, and guard rails, and heavy steel bones deep underneath the roadway. If he concentrated, he could follow a car from the edge of Manhattan across the bridge, going slow because of the traffic, past the first and then the second huge tower, then the last stretch into Brooklyn, where the car turned onto Fulton Street and ground to a halt for the midday rush.

And, more intriguing than the car – a boring old Nissan; Erik much preferred the cars Emma's parents drove – was a large metal _something_ Erik had never sensed on his trips down here. It was dome-like, with a large scope of some sort protruding from it, and, as he saw when he twisted (despite Mr. Shaw's eagle eye) to look, a bunch of kids and adults crowded around it, waving and shouting happily. Underneath the brassy-bronze covering he sensed more metal, a confusion of wires and electricity frizzing across his brain.

"What is _that_?" he asked, pointing at the strange, dome-like thing.

As one, all the kids craned their heads to see, leaving Miss Thornbottom floundering in the middle of explaining the importance of the fishing industry to the seventeenth-century economy. Angel hovered a few feet above her table to get a better look.

"What's that?" Janos took up the question, followed by Azazel and Jason Wyngarde. "What's that? It looks _cool_."

"It's the Telectroscope," Miss Thornbottom said, sounding vaguely confused. "I thought you were here to – "

"It's none of your concern," Mr. Shaw said testily. "We're not here to waste time. Now, about your – Angel, _what_ are you doing? Azazel!" Angel was already halfway to the dome-thing; Azazel, having teleported, was already there. Mr. Shaw went alarmingly red. "Mrs. Lehnsherr, if you could please act like a _chaperone_ and… and chaperone? Or something?"

"They've been so good all morning," Erik's mom said. She offered Mr. Shaw her kindest, most sympathetic mom-smile, the one she usually gave Erik before telling him, no, they wouldn't be having ice cream for dinner. "I think they deserve a little break, and Miss Thornbottom says that the Telectroscope is part of the tour. It's one of the last days for it, and it'd be a pity for the children to miss it."

Erik, as it happened, missed a decent part of that speech, because he'd hit the ground running at _a little break_ , elbowing Janos out of the way to get there first. Janos tried to knocking him over with a gust of wind, but his control wasn't great yet and Erik only stumbled a little before regaining his balance.

They had to compete with the other William Blake kids to get in front of the thing, which had been the focus of everyone's attention. After some judicious pushing and shoving, and an elbow in some kid's ribs that would have gotten him in trouble if his mother knew about it, Erik insinuated himself in front of a large screen that looked onto a broad sweep of stone with more people crowded up close.

"Wild!" Janos said, one of the few things Erik ever heard him say. Next to him, Emma made a vaguely impressed-sounding noise, which meant she was bowled over.

"Is it TV?" Azazel asked. He teleported up to the screen, pushing another William Blake kid out of the way and making the people on the other side of the screen jump. "What is it?"

"It's like Skype," one of the other chaperones said. "You're seeing people in London right now. Do you see that tower?" Beyond the clustered-together bodies, Erik saw something needle-like piercing the gray sky. It was sunny here. "That's The Palace of Westminster, where they have Parliament."

Erik had no idea what Parliament was but it didn't particularly matter because _London_ , they were looking at people thousands and thousands of miles away, nearly as far away as the Germany he couldn't quite remember. Most of the people looked… surprisingly normal, harassed-looking adults in summer clothes with light jackets – "It's the afternoon there," the chaperone explained – and kids pushing and shoving each other to get closer.

Tentatively, Erik waved. A dark-haired boy in a uniform – most of the kids, Erik saw, were in uniforms, the super-preppy kind Emma told him the kids at her future high school wore – waved back and grinned at him and, for a wonder, fearlessly stepped closer.

Most kids left Erik alone, for the good and sufficient reason that he was taller and stronger and therefore scarier, and scary enough to get everyone to leave him alone if he didn't want to be bothered. If it weren't for Emma and the fact that she could stab needles into his brain if she wanted, he'd have his own table at lunch, and peace and quiet to get work done. Just because the other kids were mostly mutants (William Blake, according to his mom, was one of the few places that actually _wanted_ mutant kids) didn't mean he wanted to spend time with them.

"I like being with you," Emma had said when Erik had suggested she go away before he magneted her to the bike rack. "It's like being with a really cranky wall. Azazel's not so bad, and Janos is okay, but I like you."

The other boy, of course, knew nothing of this, probably because he was British and spoke English weird, like the people on the BBC. He wore an outfit that Erik considered to be categorically humiliating, a smart little navy blue jacket and vest with a red-striped tie and crisp white collared shirt, matching pants and shoes polished to a high shine. He looked like what Erik imagined Mr. Shaw would want them all to wear (if it wasn't the orange jumpsuits people in prison wore), given his ranting about polo shirts and khakis encouraging dissolution and laziness.

Despite his mortifying clothes, the boy seemed vibrantly, desperately happy, his cheeks flushed – it was windy, Erik saw; his brown hair was tousled and whipping back and forth energetically – and their red was sharp against the clear blue of his eyes.

Hesitantly, Erik waved again, and the boy waved back. He said something Erik couldn't make out, then apparently repeated it when Erik stared at him in puzzlement. This got an impatient sigh – it wasn't Erik's fault he couldn't read lips, Erik thought, bristling – and the other boy turning to a bored-looking blond woman with _St. Cuthbert College_ stitched on her windbreaker. She gave him a dry-erase board and marker, which the boy accepted and uncapped with alacrity, then scribbled something across the board and turned it so Erik could see.

CHARLES FRANCIS XAVIER, said the board.

God, even his _name_ was English. Erik scrunched his face (an expression his mother thought adorable and so he tried not to make it too much, but it was almost reflexive for him when confronted with something vaguely distasteful) and the boy, Charles, laughed inaudibly at him. Then he waved impatiently at Erik, something along the lines of _hurry up, hurry up_ , or maybe _your turn_. Erik dug in his pocket for a scrap of paper, which he normally would have used to pass notes to Azazel (mostly the notes had to do with plans to overthrow Mr. Shaw) and fished a pen out of the satchel he'd dropped at his feet.

ERIK M. LEHNSHERR he wrote, and pressed it to the screen for Charles.

There was no way, _no way on earth_ he would ever confess the horror that was his middle name to anyone, especially a strange boy on the other side of the Atlantic. His humiliation would be global.

Charles waved vigorously, a _nice to meet you_ sort of wave, rather than write it down.

They stood for a moment, just looking at each other, the crowd pressing close around Erik, a few other kids anxious to get in. He pushed them back by snaps and buttons and the zippers on their backpacks. On the other side of the screen, Charles's eyes went wide and admiring, and he turned around, pressing his forefingers to his temple – an odd gesture, Erik thought, but even from three thousand miles away he could tell Charles was a weird kid.

A girl, a skinny blue-skinned girl in an embarrassing plaid skirt, gray vest, and short-sleeved blouse pushed her way through the wall of adults, who were all pointing at Charles and cooing – and, Erik saw with annoyance, drawing away from the girl a little bit. The girl ignored them, comfortable with dismissing adults and their irrelevant opinions, in favor of writing on the board Charles was holding out to her.

 _RAVEN_ said the board in emphatic, blocky letters. Raven's smile was all pearly white teeth in her blue lips, and her eyes were almost electric yellow – at least until she flickered into peachy skin and blonde hair, as wholesome as a carton of milk standing next to Charles. She flipped back to blue and gold as Erik pulled his vending machine quarters out of his pocket and twirled them through his fingers. It took more concentration than usual – something about the way Charles watched him made it seem as though the boy were standing _right there_ , close enough for his proper British jacket to brush Erik's arm.

He didn't have the skill to keep the quarters going while he did something else, so he slid them back in his pocket before he began to write.

_WHAT ABOUT YOU?_

It was a personal question, and one that he didn't ask, normally. Most kids volunteered it, if they could trust you, but past that it was rude to push or ask how strong someone was. Not that being rude had ever stopped Erik from doing anything, but there was a strange openness to Charles that made him – almost – reluctant to inflict hurt, even unintentionally.

For answer, Charles tapped his forehead vigorously, almost hard enough to make him wince. Clearly not a super-thick skull, Erik figured. He followed this up with wiggling his fingers by his temple, which Erik supposed might mean he could grow tentacles out of his head, or maybe his hair was sentient. With an exasperated eye-roll, Charles went to the dry-erase board again, making Raven hold it while he scribbled.

 _TELEPATHY_ , the board said. It explained the finger-wiggling. Erik wondered what it meant, what exactly the scope of Charles's powers were, if he had his own British version of Mr. Shaw to shout at him about improving his control so they could be ready for the day on which they'd throw off the yoke of human oppression.

The kids behind him had started rumbling and pushing impatiently, even Angel, who could hover over all of them. Azazel rematerialized in a soft, sulfuric explosion, complaining about how the rest of them wanted a turn.

"A picture first!" Erik's mom called over the restless hum of twenty third-graders. "Everyone please, let me get a picture of Erik with his new friend."

"Mom!" Erik was too horrified to do anything beyond stare at his mother, who was pulling her digital camera from her purse and fiddling with it. The other kids, anxious to witness Erik's utter and abject humiliation, all cooperatively backed off to give Erik plenty of space. He needed it, Erik figured, because he was going to melt into a puddle of embarrassment.

"Here, Erik, here." His mom was brandishing her camera and waving at him impatiently, the _crowd-in-closer_ gesture she used at family reunions despite knowing Erik hated unnecessary physical contact. "It'll be like you're standing there together."

"I'm so sorry," Erik mouthed at the boy on the other side of the Telectroscope. With the angle and the curve of the Telectroscrope's screen he couldn't quite make out whether or not Charles understood him, but imagined that he was suffering alongside Erik. Turning to face his mother, he pasted on his best smile, knowing an actual smile and "not a pained grimace, Erik" or "not looking like a shark, Erik" would get the ordeal over with much faster.

The camera popped and clicked, and his mom cooed with satisfaction. Erik imagined that Charles was just as embarrassed as he was.

* * *

The picture came out a little bit oddly, no matter how much Edie fiddled with it in Photoshop. "It's the screen refreshing," Edie explained when Erik asked about the weird lines covering the other boy, which made him seem to flicker in and out of existence. "The camera's shutter is fast enough to capture it, even though we can't see it."

"Oh." Erik glared at the photo, and the two boys in it who were obviously stupid enough to think the thing would actually work. At least the camera and its ridiculous shutter hadn't messed up Charles's smile, which was still ludicrously bright, framed by the blush on his cheeks.

He fully intended to throw it out, but it ended up tacked to the bulletin board over his desk. Over time, a few things crept over its edges – photos from swim team, movie tickets, an acceptance letter to Harvard – but never quite obscured it. When Erik packed up to move to Cambridge, the photo found its way into a shoebox beneath some ribbons and the random collection of trinkets every teenager holds on to, even if they refuse to admit they do.

* * *

"Oh, my little boy all grown up." Edie sighed sloppily and dabbed at her eyes. "What will I do without you?"

"Not embarrass me, I hope," Erik mumbled. He hoped the shouting and stampeding out in the hall was drowning out his mother's display. That other kids were probably experiencing the same thing – a parent blubbering helplessly in their room – didn't really help. At least, Erik consoled himself, his roommate hadn't been there when he'd dragged all his stuff in.

"You'd better believe I'm going to brag about you to those ladies at temple every Saturday." Edie stuffed her tissue back in her purse. "Rachel Steinberg's son went to Yale. She'll be insufferable."

"I'll make you proud, Mama," Erik mumbled, his usual response to his mother in times like this.

"You always do, Erik." Edie deposited a kiss on his forehead. "Please call me at least once a month so I know you're not passed out in Cambridge Square somewhere, and that you remember your mother."

"I won't forget you," Erik said, a little hotly, torn between resentment at the guilt trip and the sudden revelation that his mother was _leaving_. It had been only the two of them since his father's passing, and now it was just – "Are you going to be okay?"

"Oh, I'll have more than enough to keep me busy," Edie reassured him. She straightened his collar, a needless gesture considering Erik was wearing a t-shirt. "You know the kids in your old Hebrew school? Some of them need help with their abilities. I'm thinking about starting a class."

"Just as long as you don't turn into Mr. Shaw."

Mr. Shaw – or just Shaw now that Erik had eleven years on his third-grade self – had retired after moving from elementary school to high school, and then to a short-lived attempt at his own place, The Shaw Academy of Tomorrow. Only, as it had turned out, the mostly-human parents of his mutant students weren't entirely keen on a curriculum that included turning their kids into the foot soldiers that would usher in Shaw's all-mutant utopia, and the kids for the most part were more interested in passing notes and dragging out their lunch break until the last possible second than Shaw's crazed delusions. The Academy of Tomorrow had shuttered after two years, and Shaw had fallen off the face of the earth.

"I think I can safely promise that." Edie kissed his hair, which should of course be embarrassing but instead brought the hot prickle of tears to the corners of Erik's eyes. "Behave yourself, make sure you do your laundry. I love you, _schatzi_."

Erik devoted himself to feeling miserable and _not_ running after his mother for the next ten minutes, occupying himself by staring blankly at his roommate's side of the room. The suitemates, two guys named Steve and Tony, had gone crashing by him in the hallway earlier, and Tony had offered to fix the lamp that Edie had dropped – "And I can do it with a piece of gum and a twist-tie," he'd added, before Steve had apologized profusely and dragged him out of the way – and god, Erik couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of douchebag they'd stuck him with.

Whoever he was, he was apparently eighty, judging by the cardigan tossed across the neatly-made bed and painfully sensible brown shoes tucked next to the bedside table. Maybe if Erik was very lucky, luckier than he tended to be, his new roommate would be the kind of nerd who spent every waking minute at the library or in the lab and only came home every third day to shower and power-nap. Or – and this was far more likely – he'd be the sort of socially-awkward, clingy nerd who wanted to do _everything_ together based on the shaky foundation of their roommate status. Erik had seen college movies, he knew what to expect. Sighing his resignation into his pillow, Erik rolled onto his stomach, resolutely ignored the fact that most of his stuff was still in his suitcases, and shut his eyes.

Of course, after five minutes of drifting, just as Erik had begun to admit to himself that he could fall asleep and everything would be okay, an inordinately loud crash came from the common area, followed by rapid footsteps. Erik jerked upright, bracing himself for more of Steve and Tony, but no – no, it was the roommate, or someone who was very young and very lost, in gym shorts and Oxford t-shirt, beaming delightedly at Erik through a film of sweat.

"Hello!" the newcomer said, and well – wow, accent. Erik coughed and shook himself. The newcomer's smile only broadened, the joy absolutely shining in his eyes, which were quite, quite blue. "You must be the new arrival. I guess you met Steve and Tony already."

"Unfortunately," Erik mumbled, which earned him a delighted laugh.

"They're not that bad, truly; they just take a little getting used to. And if Tony gets to be too much, you can tell Steve and he takes care of it." Erik's roommate – definitely roommate, Erik thought despairingly, dragging his gaze away from an unexpectedly pert ass as the roommate bent down to unlace his shoes and kick them off – twisted around to smile at him some more, as if meeting Erik were the absolute best thing to ever, ever happen. "Do you know what you want your major to be?"

"Engineering." Erik tucked himself back into his bed, pulled his shoebox out to have something to pretend to do as his roommate stripped his sweaty t-shirt off and dropped it in his laundry bag. Under the shirt he was slim and trim, something solid to the bones. "What about you?"

"Biology, with a specialization in genetics and mutation."

"Huh." Some humans thought mutation was something to be studied for the sake of curing it. Others, he suspected, studied it because they were jealous, or wanted to unlock that power for themselves, but whichever way you looked at it, they were –

"Oh, _oh_ ," his roommate said, staring at him with huge, distressed blue eyes, utterly ridiculous with his shorts and the towel clutched to his chest and his toes clenched in his flip-flops. "I'm not – I promise, I don't look, normally, but you just thought _so very loudly_ I couldn't help but overhear that you were thinking – well, that I was human and this was the 1960s again, before institutional review boards, and, well, I do apologize and promise not to do it again."

Somewhere in that rambling, disconnected speech was a truth. It came to Erik, resolving as if through fog: his own thoughts, the disjointed series of them racing over the history of mutant rights and the dismay of being stuck with a human despite marking _mutant preferred_ in the housing checklist, his thoughts being spoken back to him by a voice not his own, which meant – which meant –

"You're a telepath," Erik said.

The roommate winced ruefully but nodded and met Erik's gaze with a resolution Erik had to admire, and holding out the hand not holding up his towel said, "Charles Xavier at your service."

"I – what?" Erik stared, thought of the box under his bed and the photograph tucked in it. He thought of it hard, in the way that Emma said was like shouting.

"Your mum took that picture," the roommate, _Charles_ , the boy Erik had met a decade and more ago with three thousand miles between them. "You were blushing and all the kids were laughing at you. Raven thought it was adorable." He bounced his hand a little. "We should do this properly, don't you think?"

Woodenly, Erik accepted Charles's hand, which was warm and a bit sticky from sweat, and strong. He said his own name, and might even have smiled as he did it, because this – it was crazy, and unlooked-for, and something that had stayed with him for years as a strangely clear moment in the haze of childhood. Sometimes he'd wondered what had happened to Charles, had thought about looking him up, but Google had seemed weird and stalker-y, and Erik loathed all known forms of social media in equal measure (he had a Tumblr, but only for purposes of yelling virtually at idiots). And so Charles had remained a steady presence, distant mostly but also strangely close, even though his growing-up remained largely hypothetical.

"You look," Erik started, before realizing he had no idea how to finish, confronted with someone who was manifestly Charles – no one else could have that nonsensical brown hair with those blue eyes – and yet obviously not – still short but filled out, muscle all compact energy.

"Older? More dashing?" Charles eyed him, and there was something knowing about his smile now. "I could say the same about you."

"Uh, thanks." Erik was good at math; he knew the odds of this happening. _I saw the childhood friend I never met one day when I was seven, and eleven years later we ended up being roommates in college_. His brain struggled to comprehend the shift in perspective, the lenses of his life forcibly realigned to take this new context into account: Charles stretched out in that bed, the two of them drinking beer, complaining about or looking forward to classes… all of it, stretching telescopically into a hazy future.

"This is – " Charles broke off to laugh. "This is unexpected, yes? Originally I wasn't going to be in this suite."

"You weren't?" Like that day, already Charles's presence had become permanent, as if things couldn't possibly be otherwise. "You certainly made yourself comfortable fast enough."

"Oh, I got here early. My mum wanted to open the house back up, and it's easier if I'm not there with all my things." Charles said it lightly enough, but a quiet hurt shaded the words nonetheless before he banished it. "I had a single, but I couldn't bear to be all by myself. It's not good for telepaths, you know. So, I put in a request for a transfer, and here I am! It's kismet."

Until two minutes ago, Erik would have committed murder for a single. Freshmen never got them unless they had specific needs or specific connections. Charles, he imagined, had the latter, judging from the brand name plastered on his shorts and the sort of self-possession Erik associated with posh private schools.

"I can't believe I'm finally meeting you," Charles said, his voice so soft and achingly _sincere_ , the way Erik absolutely would have expected him to be. "My telepathy wasn't very strong when I was a kid, of course, but even back then, I… well. It's ridiculous."

It was, and never mind that Erik thought the same thing. _I felt I knew everything about you_. Which, of course, was a ridiculous, _childish_ notion, and entirely unbecoming of an eighteen-year-old. But all the same, there Charles had been that day, staring at him with clear-eyed admiration from an ocean away, as palpably delighted with Erik's abilities as if he'd been standing right there all along. For old times' sake, Erik made the small metal gew-gaws on his bedside table spin, and for new times's sake Charles let Erik feel a bit of his unfettered pleasure at the display.

"I hope you're not wearing those ridiculous suits anymore," Erik said once he'd let the interlaced scraps of iron down. It was hard work to keep from staring at Charles's chest, where a nice blush was developing across the plain of pale, freckle-dappled skin.

"And I hope you know I know what your middle name is now," Charles said, and seemed content to look at Erik for a while longer and let his happiness wash up against him, at least until Steve and Tony came barging in and the two of them broke apart.


	28. Frosted Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aside from that one unfortunate purple jacket (Janos referred to its purchase as "a wild hair"), his taste agreed with Emma's in almost every particular, right down to his belief that the website for Frosted Hearts should not cave to the cutesy pastel-and-computer-generated-generic-people design that characterized its competitors. Or, Janos had added with a shudder, the overexposed stock photographs of happy, nuzzling heterosexual and human-standard partners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be a two-part thing, although it was mostly the result of cold medicine and the sudden, inexplicable image of Emma and Janos running a dating service together.
> 
> Pairing: Erik/Charles, Emma/Shaw (past)  
> Also starring: Emma, Tony Stark, Janos  
> Warnings: None as such  
> Advertisements: Emma runs a dating service, Erik has no time to date, Charles secretly wants lots of mutant babies and does other secret things

**Frosted Hearts**

The one redeeming quality Janos Quested had, in addition to his uncanny ability to keep his mouth shut, was his appreciation of elegance and restraint. Aside from that one unfortunate purple jacket (Janos referred to its purchase as "a wild hair"), his taste agreed with Emma's in almost every particular, right down to his belief that the website for Frosted Hearts should not cave to the cutesy pastel-and-computer-generated-generic-people design that characterized its competitors. Or, Janos had added with a shudder, the overexposed stock photographs of happy, nuzzling heterosexual and human-standard partners.

He'd also agreed with Emma that the offices of Frosted Hearts should be more professional than soppy. This meant that, when Emma conducted screenings for potential clients, they waited for her in a room whose whiteness was relieved only by eggshell and taupe, and the _Forbes_ magazines spread across a glass-topped coffee table. When she finally deigned to see them – assuming they passed the rigorous telepathic pre-inspection – it was in an office not much warmer, with silver-streaked marble floors and the chrome FROSTED HEARTS logo looming behind Emma's head.

"So, you seem to have done well for yourself."

"Well enough," Emma said, "Mr. Stark."

No one, of course, could ever accuse Tony Stark of being elegant or restrained. The goatee destroyed nearly any chance of that, Emma thought with a frown. The drunken shenanigans that had Stark's face plastered across nearly every city gossip magazine squashed the rest.

Still, money talked, and Tony's money spoke rather loudly and garishly, with the sort of accent Emma associated more with "back streets" than "Fifth Avenue." Which was why money alone was insufficient, and why the unspoken mission of Frosted Hearts was to help others – mostly mutants but the occasional qualified human – avoid the sort of miscalculation that had cost Emma five years of her life and a truly embarrassing amount of social capital.

(She preferred "miscalculation" to "mistake," as it sounded more like an error her GPS had made and not falling prey to a mistake made by telepaths in grade school: thinking you knew a person on first scan, and not bothering to look deeper. Four years later, Emma still couldn't say if the blow to her image or her pride had been harder to weather.)

While she was woolgathering, Tony was helping himself to the tablet she'd placed on her desk. He'd somehow navigated out of her list of five prospects for him and had gone, infuriatingly, for the rejects.

"What about him?" Tony held up the tablet so Emma could see the photo of a wholesome-looking young man with his Captain-America face and blue eyes.

"Oh, not him, sweetie," Emma told him. "If you got hold of him, America would lose one more slice of Mom's apple pie. He believes in truth, justice, the American Way. For that matter," and here Emma gave thanks for her near-encyclopedic knowledge of her clients, "he does, in fact, teach American constitutional history at New York University. He's as wholesome as a bottle of unpasteurized milk. It would never work."

"Oh, I don't know," Tony said, tracing a finger across the tablet's surface, a ridiculous smile sitting in the corner of his mouth. "Opposites attract and all that. Boy from the Midwest meets and falls in love with high-powered, big-city CEO? It happens in movies all the time."

"Not this movie," Emma said firmly. "Can we please get back to the people I actually selected for you?"

"Or what about him?"

"Absolutely _not_." Emma allowed herself to flicker to diamond, just enough to remind Stark who he was dealing with – namely, a person who could crush his wrist into bone dust.

"Charles Xavier," Tony said musingly. Emma could see Charles's face in Tony's mind's eye, his mouth and eyes colored vividly by lust and appreciation, the ridiculous curl to his hair that Tony was imagining looked soft and fun to rumple up. "Now, he sounds right up my alley: _casual relationship_ , _bisexual_ , _open to anything_ … That is a very, very nice alley, Miss Frost."

"He's a telepath," Emma said coolly, "and I don't think your board would appreciate having a telepath who can read your engineering secrets like it's 50 Shades of Whatever."

"Hey, our engineering secrets are much better written." Tony winced. "Anyway, his file says he's a geneticist, _and_ he's loaded," that was not included in the base information Emma gave to clients, although she did screen for financial compatibility, which meant Tony had hacked into the service's database, "so it's not like he'd want to sell me out for money."

"I doubt your board is going to see it that way. Now," Emma added a little snap to her voice, "before your time runs out and I have to see to my _other_ clients, how about we go through the people I actually picked out for you?"

Tony reluctantly agreed to this, and agreed to consider Emma's choices in more detail – as long as they were neither Dr. Rogers nor Dr. Xavier – and call her back. He left a few minutes early, for which Emma was grateful, as it gave her time to sip her tea and push back the headache that dealing with Tony Stark inevitably occasioned.

"You know," Janos said as he came bustling in with more tea and a plate of chia seeds, "perhaps Dr. Xavier would be good for him. They're very similar, after all, with the preference for no-strings-attached sex and drinking and such."

"The last thing Charles needs is someone to encourage him," Emma said with a frown. "It's high time – past high time, really, it's positively irksome – for him to admit that he needs to stop wallowing in the past and start looking for some permanence."

"As you have done," Janos said with a handwave that summoned a gust of wind to play with Emma's hair, tugging it from its coif. Emma had the sense of tugging on pigtails from him. "Of course."

"Yes, exactly," Emma said briskly. "I've put Sebastian and his lunacy behind me, and Charles ought to do the same."

Janos hummed. "I find it amazing that neither the owner of a dating service nor the author of a relationship advice column can find a single date, let alone maintain relations with another person extending past two consecutive nights."

Emma scowled. The problem with Janos was that, on the rare occasion he _did_ fail to keep his mouth shut, he said things like this.

"Do you think, once you're done editorializing," she said as Janos busied himself with needlessly rearranging the glass ornaments on a bookcase, "you could tell me if our next client is waiting?" She knew, of course – there was a fog of impatience drifting in from the lobby – but it gave Janos something to say that wasn't a well-placed barb.

"Mr. Lehnsherr for his three o'clock, ma'am," Janos said serenely as he adjusted a glass dove. "Shall I show him in?"

"Please," Emma mumbled. "Anything."

* * *

_Dear Professor X,_

_I'm a shapeshifter and I'm out and proud about my mutation. I'm eighteen. I also have a boyfriend, "Kevin," who is human. He's supportive of me and when I told him I was a mutant on our first date, he didn't flip out or run screaming. But the thing is, though, he only wants to have sex when I look like someone famous or hot, like Scarlett Johansson (his current Babe of the Moment) or that girl from The Hunger Games, which is kind of creepy since her character's only like fifteen or whatever. He tells me he loves me for who I am and that by asking me to change into different shapes he's showing how much he enjoys my mutation. When I tell him that if he loved me he would have sex with me whatever shape I'm in, he tells me I don't trust him and reminds me that his sister is a mutant, so he's not being bigoted or anything. It makes me feel like I'm freaking out about nothing and that, instead of being grateful for a wonderful boyfriend, I'm being demanding and picky. Still, I can't escape the feeling that he doesn't really love me unless I'm willing to give in to his demands. What should I do?_

_Sincerely,_

_Shapeless in Seattle_

Charles took a therapeutic sip of tea as he considered his answer. He usually had two answers to give to his Questions of the Day, one that he, as a long-time dating advice expert, knew he should give, and the one he _wanted_ to give because, sometimes, he wanted to be angry and capslock at idiots being terrible, rather than offer help and support to the letter-writer who needed him. Most days he had no difficulty suppressing the urge to say what he really thought, but other days… those were therapy tea days. Therapy tea had whiskey in it and a bit of lemon, and was necessary after a day spent covering for a sick TA and then writing the column that had taken over his life. It was also necessary to remind him that the purpose of _Professor X_ was to help people, not yell at morons.

What had started as a way to earn an extracurricular credit towards his undergraduate degree – spending a semester writing an advice column for the student newspaper (really, Moira had said, who could give better sex advice than a telepath? So he'd become _Dr. XXX_ for the next four years of his life, until he graduated) – had become a syndicated column and then a book and then another book and then, finally, a blog that got an obscene amount of unique hits each month and endless comments on his posts. Usually Charles found pride in the community that had developed around _Professor X_ and even his own sort of pride in counseling mutants still stymied by the human mysteries of love and togetherness, but every now and then… He added another splash of whiskey to his tea and sipped some more before composing a reply.

_Dear Shapeless,_

_First, let me tell you what a wonderful thing it is that you're 'out and proud.'_

Back when he'd first begun _Dr. XXX_ , he'd given relationship advice to all and sundry. Slowly, though, it had taken a turn when he'd revealed his own mutation in one column his junior year – to a telepath whose boyfriend had accused her of psionically spying on him and using him to cheat on her exams – and had become a mutant-only column. And another thing that had changed was the number of letter-writers who had asserted their mutation and made it clear they were open about what they were and what they could do. Fewer confessed to being in the closet; of those, Charles had determined (via Hank, who had done the statistical breakdown), most were telepaths or empaths.

He was out and proud himself, although it wasn't like there were databases or registries these days – thank god for that – so most prospective partners greeted his telepathy with alarm and unease. The ones who didn't care were generally drunk, or the sorts of people interested in the more sordid side of telepathy. To each their own, Charles figured, but being treated like a living, breathing bondage device lost its allure quickly.

_However, despite his words, Kevin isn't really proud of your mutation or your confidence in it: he's proud of being able to manipulate you into using your abilities in the way he desires you to use them. That is, when he says "If you loved me, you'd use your abilities to please me," he's not really taking pride in what you can do, but turning your ability into something that exists only for his gratification._

That was probably too bitter, Charles reflected, but he had enough whiskey in him not to care. After a certain point, it was easier not to advertise his telepathy, because it was either deal with the sudden recoiling and lies about having an early morning or forgotten paperwork at the office, or the sort of interest that left Charles feeling covered in a coating of slime for days. It would be nice – god, it would be very _very_ nice, to wake up with the same person morning after morning, to let himself learn all the textures of another mind, from waking to sleeping and all the times in between, and let himself be known as fully as he could know another person… but, well, if wishes were fishes after all, and (Charles reminded himself) if he was going to be any more maudlin about this, Emma would probably hear him and then he'd never hear the end of it.

Still, it _would_ be nice. Charles pushed that thought firmly to the side and refocused on Shapeless and her problems. He wished Raven were here; she would have sympathized.

_His bringing his sister into it is a classical derailing tactic, as well as an attempt to gaslight you into believing that you're the one with the hang-ups, not him. He could have any number of friends and relatives with mutations, but as long as he believes the only good mutation is the one that benefits him… he's going to be a bigot._

These sorts of letters (and, on Charles's more irritable days, his responses) always brought out the trolls, and referring to "Kevin" as little more than a mutant fetishist would likely summon FoH sympathizers or bored morons pretending to be FoH sympathizers. Hank and his team of comment moderators wouldn't appreciate that, although Charles suspected a few of his comment board "regulars" would have a field day. With a brief prayer to Hank to request forgiveness for what he was about to do, Charles went back to typing.

_Our mutations can bring new dimensions to sexuality, of course, but only if we so desire and only if our mutations are valued in and of themselves, not only for what they bring to the bedroom. In the context of a relationship that one party insists is about love, that should be a given. Even if Kevin refuses to accept this, you should know that you have every right to be valued for who and what you are, not whose shape you can take on for his gratification. And if Kevin refuses to accept this, then it doesn't matter how many relatives he has who happen to be mutants: he's still objectifying you and your abilities, and you deserve so much more than what his baseline appetite has to offer._

He still had a lecture for his seminar to prepare for the next day, and the looming specter of a paper to write. Then coffee with Raven, so she could complain about Sharkface the Boss, who was cranky and made her life miserable, and never mind that he donated a ton of money to mutant-based charities because he was cruel and the embodiment of all that was evil. And then an appointment with Emma, to indulge her never-ending quest to find him Mr. Non-Existent and her once-monthly need to remind him that just because he'd grown up in a dysfunctional home that taught him the best way to handle relationships was not to have them at all didn't mean he actually had to abide by those lessons.

"Oh, like you've managed to do," he'd said the last time she'd sermonized him on the subject. It had been cruel, but he'd had a headache – mutant rights and election cycles never went well together – and the comment had slid off Emma like a raindrop off her diamond skin.

Sighing, Charles clicked _submit_ and didn't bother waiting for the confirmation to pop up before emptying his mug. The tea and whiskey went down cold, without the edge of heat to make it pleasant. He pushed his mug to the side and, before he could think too much more about it, closed his browser window.

It was going to be a very long week.

* * *

Erik Lehnsherr was thirty-four, successful, driven, and a mutant. Also criminally good-looking in his gray suit and a tie he'd pulled loose in that attractively disheveled way that belonged to movie stars and almost no one else. And, inexplicably – although, after reading his bio, not-so-inexplicably – single. Emma was fairly certain most of her client list would have happily lined up (and many of them were people not used to waiting in line for anything) to have a chance at what Lehnsherr had, but she was also fairly certain the reverse was not true. To say Lehnsherr was _picky_ was putting it mildly, even when it came to a partner he was only interested in entertaining for a week or so.

The face looking out at her from her computer screen lacked the fire and personality of the one in front of her, faint crow's-feet and piercing grey eyes, and a mouth that didn't seem particularly given to happiness. Emma didn't have to look deeply, or pay much attention at all, to sense Lehnsherr's reluctance, or the fact that his present state of singleness was not a result of having singleness or celibacy thrust upon him. Emma was already half the calculating villainess, conspiring to rope him into matrimony. Well, Emma had worked with worse. 

"I can't tell you how important it is that they not chew their food loudly," Lehnsherr was saying as he frowned at her over steepled fingers. "It's a sign of poor discipline."

"Of course," Emma said with the lack of inflection that came from years of listening to irrational people. "I did read every single one of your comments in the supplemental information section, Mr. Lehnsherr. Including that one."

"Good," Lehnsherr said, although he dripped of suspicion.

"And you said on your initial survey," Emma paused – needless, as she'd already memorized the data, but the pause created a useful sort of suspense, "that you're not interested in anything long-term. Only casual dating to start."

"I'm not even interested in doing this," Lehnsherr said, tapping long fingers on the arm of his chair. In the air in front of him, the twisted remains of Emma's steel hair pin revolved. "My assistant is making me. She labors under the delusion that I'm missing something from my life. 'The love of a good mutant,' I think she said."

"I don't suppose it occurred to you to fire her." God knew, Emma had considered firing Janos fifty times since the day had begun.

"She would annoy me back into hiring her again." Lehnsherr had a fearsome scowl, not quite as fearsome as the smile he wore in his initial photo. Emma had never thought of happiness as being terrifying before. Fortunately, that smile was not currently in evidence. "Now, I'm assuming that at least part of your client base is interested in the same things I am, so could we please get on with this?"

He had the tablet already and was, of course, already flipping through it – had, in fact, flipped through the five top choices Emma had picked. The Frost Scale was rigorously designed, a hundred-point system designed to assess compatibility across multiple dimensions of prospective partners' personalities, behaviors, and expectations. Add in Emma's telepathy (harnessed, Emma thought with a sigh, by a battery of NDAs and confidentiality forms) and success was virtually guaranteed. You didn't get a ninety-five-percent satisfaction rate by letting morons fill out poorly-designed questionnaires, after all, not when people couldn't be counted on to know themselves.

"Now," Emma said, ignoring the boredom wafting off Lehnsherr's very attractive form, "I've gone through our client base and weeded out those who are looking for more permanent arrangements, as well as all humans, regardless of relationship preference. I've also refined results based on personality profile, so the top five picks for you are all career-minded individuals with high comfort levels with respect to their mutations, as well as a high premium placed on the importance of – "

"What about him?" Lehnsherr asked, holding up his tablet.

"Absolutely not," Emma said immediately.

"Why not?" Lehnsherr peered at the tablet. "It says here that he matches me in all ten statistically-significant data points, including his preference for non-exclusivity and no long-term commitments."

"Trust me, sugar," Emma plucked the tablet from Lehnsherr's hand, and made a note not to let clients near actual files ever again, "the last thing he's interested in is non-exclusivity. What that one needs is a house full of adopted mutant babies and rescued kittens." She set the tablet on the desk, pointedly face down – a useless gesture, given Lehnsherr's abilities, which she could feel tugging at the metal beneath her fingers.

"But it says – "

"I don't care _what_ it says," Emma snapped, "the last time I checked, _I_ was the telepath and dating-relationship expert here, not you. Would I be correct in that assumption?" Lehnsherr nodded. "And it follows logically, then, that when I tell you someone actually wants something they claim not to want, you should probably take my word for it?" Lehnsherr nodded once more, although he looked distinctly mulish. "Now." Emma drew a breath and made herself release her diamond form before she could do something as impolitic as strangle Lehnsherr until he saw reason, because _really_ , people came to her for advice and guidance and ended up thinking they _still_ knew better than a woman with a PhD in psychology and an MBA. "Now, let us return to your _compatible_ choices, shall we?"

* * *

The overbearing diamond woman at Frosted Hearts had set him up with a young professor of Mutant and Women's Studies over at Columbia, a woman who was probably a bit too young for Erik but otherwise met his stringent list of qualifications, even down to the not chewing with her mouth open.

"She does, however, spit balls of acid," Emma had added. "I hope that's not a dealbreaker."

"As long as she doesn't chew it first," Erik had said.

The first date was arranged (through Emma, as all first dates were; Erik supposed she had to do _something_ to earn her ridiculous fee) for a bar, a faculty club near Columbia, where the young woman – Angel, _Angel Salvadore_ , Erik reminded himself – would have the opportunity to escape from a terminally awkward date in favor of talking shop with colleagues. Already Erik was predisposed to like her; the choice of venue suggested a certain cunning he could appreciate, as well as a lack of the sort of pretension that characterized the clubs closer to his own world.

He found the bar much as he'd imagined it, low-raftered ceilings and a fireplace, and overstuffed chairs with the leather worn shiny in some places and cracked in others, bottles crammed into the tiny space behind the bar. For a wonder, the old books crammed into a corner bookshelf seemed not to have been touched for months, even by a dusting cloth. Not an undergraduate to be seen, for which Erik gave silent thanks; they'd been unbearable enough when he'd been an undergraduate himself, and then completely intolerable the one semester CalTech had allowed him to TA for an intro to engineering principles class. The youngest person here seemed to be the bartender, who was pushing a tumbler of whiskey across to a patron, the amber liquid sloshing crystalline in the clear of the glass.

"Cheers," the patron said, sounding anything but sincere, even if the way he tipped his head back to take and savor a mouthful suggested appreciation.

Angel hadn't arrived yet – Erik had scanned the room and found neither her face as he remembered it from her photograph or the shape of the metal hairpin she'd said she'd wear – so he wandered over to the bar. If he was going to be forced to socialize to keep Raven off his back (and really, he'd decided this one date would be it, enough to pacify Raven or else he _would_ fire her next time), then he was at least going to enjoy himself with something decent.

He ordered a whiskey of his own, a Glenfiddich mostly because it was the first label he saw that wasn't Wild Turkey. Still, it won him a "lovely choice," from the professor – he had to be one, based on the waistcoat and the jacket slung over the back of his chair, and the rumpled, academical brown hair – and, of a sudden, a quick, bright grin from an oddly familiar face.

"It's good, isn't it?" Good god, Erik thought distantly, that smile. He nodded. "Not quite as good as the eighteen-year, of course, but still… anything goes down nicely after some days, wouldn't you agree?"

Erik would agree to many things on account of that mouth, and those eyes, which were vividly, vividly blue in the somberness of the bar. He might even, he suspected, be willing to carry on conversation, despite the fact that he rarely had anything to say to anyone. (It was, in fact, one of the reasons he'd insisted on _casual encounters_ only; sex was one thing, intimacy quite another, and conversation was hardly necessary for the former.) The man sitting next to him winced, a funny little expression that managed to be pained and rueful at the same time.

"Are you here to meet someone?" A tilt of the chin indicated Erik's drink, which he'd consumed half of rather ungracefully. "I don't recall seeing you here before."

"I am, as a matter of fact," Erik said. He scanned the room again for Angel's hairpin, and came up blank. "She's not here yet, though."

"Ah. Well, we could always wait together, and you can savor that properly." The stranger had very nice hands, square and capable-looking, not slender like Erik's own and now he was reaching out to Erik, offering one of them – his right, of course, so they could shake hands and introduce themselves properly.

"Charles Xavier," the stranger said, and all at once became the face from three days ago, looking up at Erik from the one-dimensionality of an iPad, his eyes nothing like Erik remembered – a thousand times more alive and more electric – and that smile still infuriatingly Mona-Lisa-like.

"Erik Lehnsherr," Erik said, and automatically accepted Charles's hand, which was somewhat cool from the glass. _I feel like I know you already._

"Funny," Charles Xavier said, with a similarly funny quirk of his lips, "that's usually my line."


	29. Frosted Hearts 2.whatever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles lazily stretched into the morning, sighing at the twinges and aches that, once he resettled under the covers, resolved into a delicious warmth. He might almost call the feeling _sated_ , but that would imply he'd had enough of what he'd gotten last night, and Charles decided that he was nowhere near his limit. Every night, he concluded as he arched his back to pop a bit of the stiffness out of his spine (and maybe, to show off for Erik a little), he could do this every night forever and wake up to it every day besides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, when I started this thirty days nonsense I just wanted to write thirty one-shots not start a zillion new fics. I WANTED THE OPPOSITE OF THIS.
> 
> Pairings: Erik/Charles, Raven/Irene  
> Also starring: Emma, Raven, Steve Rogers  
> Warnings: None as such  
> Advertisements: general obliviousness, unfortunate coincidences, Charles being sexy and seductive

**Chapter two**

Charles lazily stretched into the morning, sighing at the twinges and aches that, once he resettled under the covers, resolved into a delicious warmth. He might almost call the feeling _sated_ , but that would imply he'd had enough of what he'd gotten last night, and Charles decided that he was nowhere near his limit. Every night, he concluded as he arched his back to pop a bit of the stiffness out of his spine (and maybe, to show off for Erik a little), he could do this every night forever and wake up to it every day besides.

Three had been the limit last night, Charles thought when he peeled an eye open and saw the condom wrappers scattered on the floor by the bed, one of them resting on top of the discarded comforter like a bit of blue confetti. Stopping by the drug store on the way to his place from the bar had been wise. Absently, Charles scratched at a bit of dry lube and probably other things off his belly.

"Do you want me to be late for work?" Erik rumbled from – not beside him. Charles blinked and pushed himself up onto his pillows.

Erik had exhausted him so thoroughly Charles had slept through both him getting up _and_ appropriating Charles's shower. The room still had the dimness of pre-dawn – which would also explain how Charles had slept on undisturbed; he was in academia for a reason, and that reason was days that started at nine o'clock – and outside the city streets buzzed with only occasional traffic. Charles couldn't even smell the doughnuts from the fancy doughnut place down the street.

"What do you do that has you getting up at this hour?" Charles asked, and just to be cruel, eeled around so he lay on his stomach, sheet pushed enticingly low on his hips. _Surely nothing that important._

Lots and lots of naked skin shivered as Charles did that, and all of Erik seemed to redshift with lust, a sudden ache that snagged Charles low and deep. Erik had only his boxers on – Charles really should have hidden those – and they didn't do much to conceal his interest, as if anything could be concealed from Charles anyway. Charles looked and made sure Erik saw and felt him looking, his gaze like fingers tracing the line of Erik's shoulders and arms, the strangely demure, brown nipples and the elegant ladder of muscle leading down chest and abdomen to… well, Erik's boxers, Charles supposed.

"Conference call with London today," Erik said raggedly, and returned to hunting for his clothes. "Time difference."

Last night his self-possession had driven Charles right up to the edge of pleasure, close enough for him to look down into it, and held him there until Erik was good and ready for him to come. Now, though, Charles wanted to scream, but for entirely different reasons. He watched as Erik studiously ignored him, so studiously that he was practically telegraphing his awareness of Charles lying stretched and waiting for him to come back to bed, and tried to content himself with soaking up the way Erik's skin caught the light from his bedside lamp and glowed, soft with moisture from the shower, captivating even when doing something like putting on his socks.

_Unfairly magnificent_ came to mind, and then _unfair_ when Erik extracted his shirt from a tangle that contained Charles's waistcoat and a pair of jeans that hadn't made it to the hamper. Slowly, the realization that he'd left his jacket at the bar coalesced, somewhere in the neighborhood of _Erik had a date last night that wasn't me_ and _Oh my god, Charles, you cad_ and then _That poor girl._

"I hope your date won't be angry at you," he said.

Erik's long, lovely mouth twisted. "I'll have to call to apologize, I suppose."

"It would be the first gentlemanly thing you've done since last night."

That got him a snort. "This from the man about to send me on the walk of shame out of his _very_ nice apartment?"

"Hmmm." Charles rolled onto his back again and smiled. It seemed to soften something in Erik, who even smiled back. "I prefer the stride of pride, myself. We're sexual beings, Erik; we might as well own it."

"I already got the lecture on how mutation propagates itself through a species," Erik said. His voice had dropped, shifting into the range that Charles associated with devastating effects in the trouser region. Erik had his shirt on now, and pants, but the shirt was unbuttoned and the dress slacks were still undone, gaping enough that Charles, if he was very clever, could get his fingers in. The bed dipped as Erik perched on the edge of it, his body blocking out the light from the bathroom, shadows catching the edge of his cheekbones. "Sexual reproduction, isn't it?"

"And response to environment." Charles pitched his voice in a way that he thought of as sultry. Raven said it sounded weird and geeky, but there had to be something seductive in it; Erik was bending closer, as if Charles himself were magnetic, eyelids drifting shut and eyes drifting down Charles's naked torso – before, no no _no_ , catching himself and leaning back.

"Do you…" Erik frowned and shook his head. "I want to see you again."

It didn't have the raw, earnest desperation that part of Charles secretly wished to hear (no, Charles told himself, no part of him _at all_ wanted to hear that). Instead, it had something that he had come very rapidly to expect from Erik. In another person, Charles would call it _bossiness_ and he'd never once – outside of Raven, anyway – taken to being taken charge of. But, well, having Erik take charge of things last night had been delightful, and so Charles was happy to call it _certainty_.

"Hmmm, give it here." Charles tugged on Erik's hand, appropriated a pen from the breast pocket of Erik's shirt. The pen needed a couple of shakes to start the ink flowing, which required some ungracefulness from Charles, but it started and Charles wrote out his phone number in the warm cup of Erik's palm.

"Don't forget to copy it down before you… do anything," Charles said.

"I won't," Erik told him, almost enough conviction in the words for a promise.

They kissed one last time – twice, maybe three times, depending on the particular definition of _kiss_ , Erik pulling back only when Charles heroically sacrificed his libido on the altar of the London conference call to remind him of the time difference. He wore dishevelment well, Charles thought as he pulled the button of Erik's collar out of its hole, mostly to hear Erik's aggravated noise and watch his long, skillful fingers work the button back in again.

"I'll call," Erik said, and bent for one last kiss – Charles's forehead, wisely not his mouth – and grabbed his jacket and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

Charles turned his lamp back off, and decided he was too lazy to get up to turn off the bathroom light. Instead, he rolled over into the spot Erik had vacated, which was cool now but still smelled like him. Absently, he tagged on to Erik's thoughts as he took the twenty-story elevator ride back down to the street, a moment of confusion as he reoriented himself – a flicker only, as Erik accessed his powers (oh he could read electromagnetic fields, how _fascinating_ ) – and then solidifying with determination as he looked for a taxi.

Following him further, to work, to whatever life he led outside the bar and Charles's bedroom, would be creepy. Charles let him go reluctantly, curling his mind back and back so it knew only the warm comfort of his bed and the pillow bunched under his cheek.

He wanted to see Erik again. And not just tonight, or whenever they next met, and not only the night after that, but for some hazy, indefinite future that consisted of copious amounts of nakedness and lying curled together, Erik whispering dirty plans for _next time_ in his ear while Charles twined their thoughts together like fingers grasping each other.

"Serial one-night stands," Charles told his ceiling. "Those are, in fact, possible to have without having a relationship. It's like friends with benefits, except no friendship required. He wants what you want. Yes, that's the way to look at it."

Only, he suspected, it really wasn't, and wouldn't it be fitting, that in the space of one night his life had become fodder for his own column? It would be, Charles decided bleakly; he could almost see the letter in his inbox.

_Dear Professor X,_

_I'm thirty-two years old, and a successful, responsible individual. I'm also a telepath who's decided just to have fun and not pursue a committed relationship for a while. Many of my acquaintances – one in particular – have told me that I should be looking for something more permanent and "fulfilling" (as if monogamy is inherently fulfilling) instead of wasting my time with one-night stands and acting like one of the students I teach. So what do I do when I meet the most amazing, fantastic, brilliant man who is a genius in bed, who values my mutation (and me), and all I can think of is eloping to Las Vegas… when all he wants is to have fun and not pursue a committed relationship? Please advise._

_Sincerely,_

_Charles you bloody idiot_

* * *

Charles wanted to see him again.

Erik told himself not to get too excited. Of course Charles wanted to see him again. The sex last night had been… well, if sex went to eleven, sex with Charles went there. It only made sense that, once he'd had it, he'd want more of it. Erik hummed to himself and returned to examining Azazel's data from the _Avalon_ 's most recent flight simulation. Maybe tonight (he'd put Charles's number into his phone first thing, of course), if Charles could clear his schedule – or maybe Erik would find it and clear it for him.

_It won't happen if you don't finish this report_. Erik scowled at the numbers scrolling across his tablet screen, but the scowl dissolved as he thought of Charles in bed, warm and sleepy, hiding a smile in the ridge of Erik's collar bone.

"You met someone!"

Raven was blue, as usual, but clothed to spare the sensibilities of the London humans who were helping finance Erik's current proposal. She was also observant (as usual) and obnoxious (as, unfortunately, usual), and that combined with Erik's not wanting to leave Charles's apartment resulting in him not having nearly enough coffee was more than enough to pitch him over the edge from "vaguely discontent" into "annoyed."

"You're fired," he said to his tablet. _God_ where was Azazel getting these numbers from? "Have your things packed up in twenty – no, ten – minutes, and security will escort you down."

"Sure thing, boss," Raven said cheerfully. She sat down in the clients' chair across from Erik, uncaring of the fact that the chair was, deliberately, the most uncomfortable and hostile chair money could buy. "So, tell me about them. Are they good in the sack?"

"The last time I checked," Erik eyed her, "your primary concerns as my part-time administrator, hired because my CFO's girlfriend needed work, were keeping the coffee filled, answering phones, and not inquiring about my sex life."

"Irene always says you don't take care of yourself." Raven's secondary mutation had to be selective deafness, Erik decided; the things she elected not to hear went unheard. "And you hired me because my skills as a researcher are unparalleled, and you'd never get a dime of government money sending 'Give us the fucking grant you morons' to the NSF."

That, at least, was true; Raven was maddeningly competent and finding and exploiting other companies' weaknesses and chiseling money out of unlikely sources. The British had loved her this morning, which was the only reason Erik hadn't been serious about firing her.

"I take care of myself," he said, rather than compliment her. It won him a wolf-whistle and an _I'll bet_ , a flash of white-toothed grin that was nearly as unnerving as his own. "By which I mean," he said over whatever innuendo-laced remark Raven was about to make, "I can see to procuring my own dates – "

" _Procuring_?" Raven winced. "I set you up with a _dating service_ , Erik."

"Whatever you want to call it." Erik set the tablet down before he broke it and wished, passionately, for Raven to have some kind of metal on her. She didn't – she never wore it, on purpose – but the chair was metal, a cheap alloy that offended every one of Erik's sensibilities. "The point is, if you must know, I went on a date last night."

"With someone from the dating service?"

Erik eased the chair up off the floor, enough for it to float clear of the carpet. "No, as a matter of fact. I found this person on my own." Technically he'd found Charles through Frosted Hearts, but Emma had been ridiculously insistent on their incompatibility.

Well, Charles had seemed very open to the idea of no-strings-attached sex, which was just one of the many appealing things about him. His eyes, of course, which were the loveliest, electric blue, like an aurora Erik had seen once (and felt, and Charles's telepathy had been like that, a long cold, vivifying slide across his skin), and his hair, which was as soft as it had looked in on Emma's tablet. His freckles, which Erik had secretly tried to count, and a body that had muscles in most places and pliant curves elsewhere, and a truly, truly fantastic ass that Erik wanted, very badly, to do very bad things to as often as possible.

 

"Oh my god, that is… I don't know if that's endearing or disturbing, or both," Raven was saying. "You should _see_ your face right now, it is, like, _besotted_. That's a…" Raven squinted at him, yellow eyes narrowing, "oh my god, that's a _I got some last night_ face. That's a _I got some and I want some more_ face."

"Then you can consider your experiment a success and go," Erik said, attempting to transmogrify his smile into something more terrifying. The chair drifted closer to the door, a little higher now, enough so that Raven's feet dangled in the air. "Now, I believe you have some grant or other to write and a job to keep, so goodbye."

The door swung shut in Raven's face, but couldn't quite block out her whoop of victory.

* * *

"Ah, Dr. Rogers." Emma allowed herself to flicker to diamond in order to prevent Steve Rogers from inadvertently crushing her hand. "A pleasure, as always."

"Ma'am." Steve beamed at her, a milk-and-cookies expression that made Emma feel as if she'd been transported to some mythical, wholesome American past. "I'm sorry I walked in, well, when I did."

"It's no difficulty," Emma said smoothly. "A misunderstanding with a client. I'm sure you have similar scenes."

"Usually my students don't fume about me standing them up – they tend to prefer it, actually." That smile again. Emma had never quite worked out why a person like Steve Rogers had signed on with her service, considering he should have married his high school sweetheart right after graduating from State University. Someone, somewhere, had to be wearing his letter jacket. "But I hope everything worked itself out."

"Oh, free things usually help." Emma managed to hide a wince and telepathically reminded Janos to waive Angel's fee for the next six months. It was fortunate for Lehnsherr that he was both rich and a mutant, otherwise Emma would have gotten rid of him.

_Look, I would have been totally cool if he'd called you to say he couldn't make it. I would have been totally cool if he'd lied, as long as I didn't know._ Angel hadn't sounded particularly hurt so much as angry, a sentiment to which Emma could relate; Frosted Hearts, after all, had been founded at least partly because of Sebastian's obsessions and the series of broken engagements that had resulted from them. _But seriously, I'm walking in and he's walking out with some guy? Come on._

Along with a penalty fee, Emma was going to extract an apology out of Lehnsherr. With pliers, if she had to.

Something of this must have shown on her face, because Dr. Rogers was easing back in his chair, radiating alarm.

"It's not you, honey," Emma said. Reassurance was not usually in her spectrum of responses to distress, but something about Steve seemed to warrant it. "Now, before I keep woolgathering, let's see about your options."

Unlike certain other clients she could name, Dr. Rogers politely kept to the five choices she offered and listened attentively as she listed their various virtues and vices. Bruce Banner – a bit temperamental, but not everyone can be nice all the time (a fact that Steve's personality profile hinted at) – was leading, with Armando Muñoz in second place, when Emma pulled up choice number five.

"He sounds wonderful, but…" Steve poked at the tablet. "It says here that he's not really looking for anything long-term. Now, I'm pretty open when it comes to lots of things, Miss Frost, but I really am serious when it comes to being in this for keeps."

_Two steps removed from a promise ring._ Emma took a breath. "I know his profile says… what it does, but trust me when I say that it's an error." She had been planning to say _Dr. Xavier knows what he wants, he just can't bring himself to admit it_ , but that hadn't seemed to work lately. White lies were forgivable offenses, Emma told herself. "There was a bug in the system that we're working to address."

Dr. Rogers peered at her skeptically, as if he were the telepath and not the freakishly strong, but still quite baseline, human. Emma kept her face as bland as possible. _Taupe thoughts_ , Astrid used to say when talking about how to keep psionics or expression-sensitive mutants from detecting what she was thinking. That was another friendship Sebastian had flushed down the toilet. _Taupe thoughts_ , and Emma let her lips fall into the smile that suggested nothing but utter truthfulness and that she knew best.

"Okay then!" Dr. Rogers said cheerfully. "I guess if it's fine with him, we can set something up? For tomorrow or this weekend – but if it's fine with him, of course."

"It will be," Emma told him as she reached for the phone. It _would_ be.

* * *

"Oh my god, Charles, you will _never_ guess what happened at work today."

Only the long-standing promise that had kept Charles from reading Raven's mind since she'd turned twelve and required _privacy, Charles, a girl has to have some privacy_ kept Raven's assertion from being untrue. That, and Charles had been unable to concentrate on anything not Erik-shaped for the entire day, and that had included his column.

_Dear Professor X,_

_I'm part of a MRO at my school, and for the most part I really enjoy it. We're working to develop the mutant community here and advocate for mutant rights with the administration and the local government, and I've been thinking that it's because of this MRO that I want to go to law school and specialize in mutant rights work._

_But the thing is, I'm gay (well, a lesbian I guess), and I don't think that would be cool with my fellow members. They say that, since mutants only make up 9% of the population, we have an obligation to reproduce and increase our numbers. This really freaks me out. It seems really baseline to say that the only reason we're here is to perpetuate the species. I mean, what about free will and being what we want to be? I don't ask these questions because I don't want to be ostracized from the group and lose my friends. I haven't come out to them because of this attitude, though, and because I can't trust them, I don't know if I can really consider them my friends after all. What can I do?_

_Signed,_

_Mutant and Proud (and not Heterosexual)_

And he should be able to concentrate on that – the hypocrisy of not accepting all forms of consensual sexual expression in a community where mutations regularly challenged traditional Western conceptions of sex and gender – and why couldn't the fates have sent him something asking for practical sex advice? Charles set his laptop back on the coffee table and tried to focus on Raven, who was vibrating impatiently, instead.

"Guess!" Raven said. "I mean, you never will, but _guess_."

"Sharkface Boss gave you a promotion."

"I wish, but this is almost as good."

Charles worked his way through three more possibilities – a Friday off to go on a mini-break with Irene (no, but that was an idea), winning a grant she'd slaved over for weeks (still hadn't heard), Sharkface Boss going back to the waters from whence he came (no, but Charles was getting warmer) – before finally admitting, dramatically, "You're right, I'll never guess."

"Sharkface Boss _met_ someone," Raven crowed, bouncing a little so Charles, who was on the sofa with her, bounced too. "You should have seen him, he came to our teleconference in yesterday's clothes and everything."

Charles thought wistfully of Erik in yesterday's clothes, his precision rumpled at the edges and ever-so-slightly off-kilter. "How does this affect you, exactly?"

"I don't know. He might become marginally less awful if he's getting some on the regular… he only tried to fire me once today, and he wasn't really paying attention when he said it." Raven paused. "If this ends up working out, I might even get a raise or promotion for being the one who brought them together. It's like _Emma_ , only without the empire-waist dresses."

"What, bringing people together inadvertently?" Charles's computer, giving up, switched over to its screen-saver. "Or the part where Emma's an administrative assistant-cum-grant writer?"

"With a happy ending," Raven corrected. She clapped her hands and bounced some more. "I could write the modern adaptation of it. _Clueless_ for the twenty-first century. But seriously, Sharkface Boss _really_ needs to get his ashes hauled, or he did before last night. I'd say he needs to get married, but I honestly don't know if anyone could put up with him till death do they part."

The only things Charles knew about Sharkface Boss – because he was an honorable man who kept his word and did not read his sister's mind – was that he was a tyrant who made Raven's life unnecessarily difficult, and that he was so busy being a tyrant that he either never dated or never had any kind of romantic attachment to anyone. Charles didn't even know his name, and the company name was some acronym that had left his head as soon as Raven had said it. Sharkface Boss did something complicated and confidential with planes and engines, and Raven helped him find the money to do it and, when she wasn't doing that, helped him find the true love that had to be swimming around out in the vast ocean of New York City.

Raven had found earthly bliss with Irene, and so, like an evangelist, she'd taken up the gospel of deep, committed relationships and (apparently) started beating Sharkface Boss on the head with it. The fascination with her employer's romantic life indicated to Charles that Raven did, actually, care about him despite his unmitigated awfulness; if Raven hadn't cared, she wouldn't have interfered. Interference was how Raven expressed her care and concern.

"The next thing," Raven said, "is to get him to fess up to who the new person is, but I've decided to wait on that. Let them get used to each other first, and then maybe after a while I can get him to invite the new person to the office winter party."

"How restrained of you." Charles flicked a glance at his phone. It was five-thirty and nothing so far. Erik seemed like the sort of man who worked until near collapse, to which Charles could relate, but really… not when more incendiary sex was in the offing. He picked up his phone and flipped through to its settings to make sure he'd turned the ringtone on.

"Expecting a call?" Raven purred, sudden and scaly and blue at his elbow.

"Lab results," Charles said, and to cover himself reached for his computer. "Would you like to help me answer a letter? I promise this is going to make you very angry."

"The day just keeps getting better," Raven said happily, and scrunched herself close to read over his shoulder and, on occasion, shriek indignantly in his ear.

He nearly pushed her off the sofa when the phone rang, and then nearly dropped his laptop fumbling for it. With a grunt of annoyance, Raven rescued the computer and pulled it over into herself so she could fiddle with Charles's reply, which had not progressed past a detailed biological explanation of why the MRO people were wrong; he would have to review his post carefully before submitting it, god knew what she'd – oh god. Thoughts of checking the piece for Raven's modifications fled. Not an unknown number.

_Frosted Hearts_ , said the caller ID, and Charles's own heart dropped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow is the last day! I can't believe it.


	30. Boring in love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a minute, back when they'd first met, Raven had thought Erik looked interesting, with a sort of brooding, danger-edged handsomeness… but then he'd wandered into the kitchen the next morning in old cotton pajama pants and the rattiest bathrobe Raven had ever laid eyes on and _slippers_ and then she had realized that Charles had found the only other twenty-five-year-old AARP member in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The horrible thing about being unable to write for a living is, when you can't write, you fall behind, and when you can finally write again, you spend the rest of your life trying to catch up.
> 
> So here, three months too late, is the final installment of Thirty Days. I wanted to do something self-contained, so I dredged up a memory of a prompt from the kinkmeme although there's no way in hell I'll be able to remember where I found it.
> 
> Pairings: Erik/Charles, Raven/Hank  
> Warnings: Violence (shooting), trauma  
> Advertisements: Erik and Charles being the world's most boring couple, until they're not anymore; canon disabled character; social justice; Raven POV

**Boring in love**

_(Her past life is really that – a past life, some terrible dream she's left behind. But watching the blood run, hearing Charles's voice from very far away – her past seems terribly present.)_

Charles brings Erik home for the first time when he's twenty-three and Raven is seventeen. With her being in high school and Charles across the Atlantic in Oxford, she has very little sense of her brother's romantic life. Not that she ever in a million years wants to think about Charles and sex in the same sentence. Intellectually, she knows he's had it, although it's something she can't quite convince herself to accept as a reality. There'd also been the most horrifying ten minutes of her life when she'd turned thirteen and he'd brought out diagrams and flow charts (oh god the _flow charts_ ) to explain about _intercourse_ because Sharon was a giant prude, and then endless telepathic screenings when she'd brought boys home that had made her nearly melt with embarrassment. 

She's heard of Erik, vaguely. He'd existed first as a notion, a German doctoral student in physics and fellow mutant in Oxford's cross-college Mutant Activist Association with whom Charles had had occasional philosophical and political disagreements. Only later did he become _Erik_ , namely since six hours ago, when she'd heard a quietly surly voice observe how cruelly Charles must have suffered, growing up in such hardship, that she's had a face and body to give shape to the idea of _Erik Lehnsherr_. 

"Oh hush," Charles had admonished him, in much the same tone he'd used to tell Raven just to _try_ the poached fish, and then he'd leaned up to press the most chaste kiss Raven had ever seen to his boyfriend's cheek. 

* * *

_(Raven, love, Raven, I need you to get everyone inside. Hank, stay with him DO NOT MOVE. Raven no, go inside. No way, Charles, I'm coming with you. Very well. Her brother's voice isn't like she's ever heard it before.)_

It comes as no surprise to anyone, least of all Raven and her friends (who are, more or less, the kind of family you find and are in some weird way like Charles and Erik's adoptive children) that Charles and Erik get married. It's not as surprising as it should be that they wait until a year after legalization in New York, or that it just _happens_ , a nice little ceremony with the justice of the peace and dinner with friends afterward. No one gets sloppy drunk, something Raven attributes to Charles now being an ancient thirty-two and therefore even more boring and old-fartlike than ever. 

"Erik would explode if there were a big to-do about it," she overhears Charles saying to Emma Frost when Emma accosts him just outside the restroom. "I know he has his history, but when it comes to this sort of thing, he doesn't like spectacle."

And the thing is, Raven really can't imagine either of them going in for the gay wedding of the century or putting one of those obnoxious articles in the _Times_ wedding section. She and Angel had been hiding out at Angel's place not long after the announcement and Angel had almost choked on her own spit as they'd laughed about flower arrangements and matching suits, and swans in the bathtub like in _Father of the Bride_ … until they'd calmed down and Angel had said, "But really, could you imagine, like, one of those reality TV weddings?"

Raven hadn't been able to imagine it, and she's pretty imaginative. It's fitting, somehow, she thinks as she meditates her fourth screwdriver of the night and reminds herself that Hank – who is steadfastly refusing Angel's invitations to dance – is their designated driver. 

Erik and Charles are one of those couples who have been old and married right from the beginning. They kiss each other good-morning and hello at the end of the day. Erik gets Charles cardigans for Christmas and Charles gets Erik ties and tie-tacks for Hanukkah. Mercifully, they have no pet names for each other, although Charles likes to stroke his wedding ring, his thumb or index finger absently rubbing the band when he's thinking about something else. Erik knows how Charles takes his tea and goes to bed at eleven every night, and complains about Charles's refusal to become a morning person. For a minute, back when they'd first met, Raven had thought Erik looked interesting, with a sort of brooding, danger-edged handsomeness… but then he'd wandered into the kitchen the next morning in old cotton pajama pants and the rattiest bathrobe Raven had ever laid eyes on and _slippers_ and then she had realized that Charles had found the only other twenty-five-year-old AARP member in the world. Then, despite Charles waking up an hour later, they'd still read the _Times_ over breakfast together, Erik sipping his coffee and his slipper flap-flapping absently against his bare foot.

They play chess every night and have one glass of scotch each, and they have done this ever since Erik had first discovered Charles's dad's old chess set in the library. She could set her watch by them: eight o'clock every night without fail they'd get up and wander down the hall, Erik's footsteps and the quiet creak of Charles's wheelchair fading with distance and idle conversation about the day. One time she'd worked up the courage to sneak a look and see if chess was really _chess_ and not a euphemism for something that would scar her for life… and it had been as advertised, the two of them bent close over the board, Erik pouring a glass of scotch for both of them. 

For their honeymoon they go to London so Erik can present at a conference on particle physics, and, while Raven watches Hank hold yet _another_ pity party for himself about his feet (he'd resigned himself to custom-made shoes today and the trip to the cobbler had been difficult), she imagines the two of them going around to museums and Erik reading every single descriptive card in the Tate Modern and Charles lecturing Erik on history as they tour the Parliament building.

"They're like Kate and Leo," Sean says. He's here to cheer her up, which he manages by awkwardly flirting with her and telling her about his many failed pick-up attempts. He also makes frequent trips to the liquor cabinet.

"Leo drowned and Kate got old and died," Raven hiccups into her sangiovese. "And in real life Kate ended up marrying some other guy."

Sean banishes reality with a wave of his hand and spills his beer over the upholstery. "Oops. Shit. But they're _made for each other_ , is the point. "My point is, you can't expect to be boring in love like they are. Everyone else is going to have the crazy drama, but they're just going to be, like, The Dude. Abiding."

"You're not making me feel any better," Raven says blurrily. "Now get me more wine."

 _Feeling better_ never really happens, although Hank's funk eventually passes and things smooth over. Charles and Erik get back from their conference-honeymoon and the only thing that's different about them is the wedding bands on their fingers.

"Did you make them yourself?" Marie had cooed when Charles had shown his to her at the reception, one half of a pair of plain titanium bands. The other half of the pair was on Erik's finger, which he steadfastly refused to display. "That would be _so_ romantic, oh my god."

"Then it's a good thing we picked them up on a whim when we were downtown one day," Erik had said, and departed for parts unknown.

This, Raven thinks as Charles makes a beeline for the tea kettle and Erik hauls the luggage upstairs, is what Sean meant. _Boring in love_.

* * *

_(Sir, you can follow if you want, the paramedic tries to say. Charles ignores him utterly. A touch of Charles's voice flickers through her mind, directions for the house, come to the hospital, you need to take care of things, my darling. I trust you.)_

It's been ten years since Charles and Erik met, and two since they've been married. It's been three years since Raven and Hank started going out, six months since Hank had an accident in the lab and turned himself large and blue and furry. That means about four major fights between the two of them and numerous smaller incidents that consist of Hank saying something passive-aggressive and Raven firing back something that's mostly just aggressive before stalking out.

"It's not that I don't love him, it's that…" Raven's voice breaks. If she were anyone else, she'd be blotchy-faced and swollen-eyed, but her sleek blue skin isn't even flushed. Still, she's already shredded half a box of Kleenex, and god, she's already finished half a pint of Ben n' Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Charles is coming back with another carton and a commiserating expression.

"It's that?" Charles prompts. He's been telepathically following her rambling while on his ice-cream fetching mission.

"Oh, I don't know." She manages to wait until Charles has the plastic wrapping and lid off before pouncing. "Henry's just so… he can't accept himself and every time he says something like 'Oh my god I look like something out of a B-movie' or 'Do you know how much shampoo I go through?' I just… _argh_. And when I try to reassure him, he gets all 'Well _you're_ a shapeshifter, you can look _normal_ whenever you want' and he doesn't get it that I don't _want_ to look normal!" She breaks off to swallow a spoonful of ice cream, winces at the brain freeze.

"You can't tell someone how to feel about their mutation," Charles begins delicately. Raven snorts around a piece of cookie dough ( _Erik would tell Hank to get over it_ ), but Charles forges on. "This particular… manifestation of Hank's abilities is still very new to him. All you can do is tell him you'll support him and love him, and be there for him as he adjusts."

"But if I break up with him – which I am _so_ close to doing – he's going to think I broke up with him because he's big and blue and furry, not," she waves her spoon, splattering the old leather sofa with ice-cream melt, "not because he's being a self-hating jerk who's starting to make _me_ feel insecure about my own mutation."

"Perhaps you could tell him that?" In the way he's done since they were kids, Charles pulls himself up onto the couch and tucks himself close along Raven's side, a reassuring presence dressed in a soft old cardigan and worn-in khakis. The cardigan and khakis haven't really changed either; for all Raven knows, they're the same ones Charles has had since he'd turned seventeen and resigned himself to never having a growth spurt. Charles takes the hand Raven isn't using to eat Ben n' Jerry's in one of his. "If he loves you, he'll understand how much you had to go through to accept yourself."

"I guess." It was only a week of frustration and one _I smell like wet dog_ comment too many that had led to Raven turning up at the house and ugly-crying into Charles's shoulder when he greeted her at the door; she's not particularly looking forward to another heart-to-heart with her boyfriend. Sniffling, Raven sighs and buries her head in the curve of Charles's neck. "I bet you and Erik never had to put up with anything like this."

"Well, we _were_ older when we met, and our powers had pretty much stabilized by then," Charles laughs, a warm rumble against Raven's forehead. "We also tend not to be exposed to genome-altering substances. But I suppose if one of us suddenly turns blue and furry, the other would be there for him."

"I don't know about that," Erik, who's just come in, says, his low, dark voice softened with something that might be called teasing.

"Oh, come off it," Charles laughs, reaching back over the couch to swipe at Erik, who catches Charles's flailing fingers and squeezes them quickly before dropping away. Charles rubs his wedding ring again, twisting it back and forth, before reaching for Raven's spoon.

* * *

_(You can back the fuck off, sir, until she stops crying, Raven snaps at a detective. And anyway, her mother isn't here. Jubilee sniffles into Raven's t-shirt and Raven wants to do the same, but she has an interfering human to deal with, and she glares at him until the detective scribbles something in his notebook and goes to talk to Moira.)_

The consensus among Raven's closest friends – so Angel, Hank, Darwin, Alex, and Sean – is that Charles and Erik really are just boring. Raven's known this about Charles all her life, and suspects that he may have made Erik boring by osmosis. Sean has his Kate-and-Leo/The Dude theory. Alex points out that _something_ happens once you pass twenty-five that drags you down into the doldrums of adulthood, where you start having serious thoughts about things like your 401(k) and whether or not the guest bathroom needs regrouting. Love has to work the same way, with the grand declarations and romance all coming at the beginning and the prosaic stuff filters in later. So it makes sense that Charles and Erik had all the whirlwind romance and fiery passion and bodice-ripping accomplished in Oxford – so, mercifully off-screen for Raven – and so all they see now is what people become as they approach the cliff-face of middle age and realize they're living with another boring, but acceptable, person and decide to continue with the arrangement.

Not that it's bad, of course. Raven reminds herself of this after Darwin finishes spilling his guts about his pathetic secret crush on Alex. It's just _boring_.

* * *

_(It was such a lovely day, she thinks. Her skin still remembers the warmth of a New York July, even though the cold hospital air raises her scales in goosebumps.)_

The NYC Mutant Support League's summer picnic is one of those things Charles and Erik organize as two of the more senior mutants in the community. Erik grumbles about it, remarks that Charles handles with a deft _yes dear_ and a quick kiss on his cheek or the back of his hand. It's a gesture that Raven, for all her sensitivity to gesture, can't parse. Is it the absent kind of affection that's pure reflex – simply something Charles does, habit or instinct – or something more? Whatever it is (and whatever goes on behind it with Charles's telepathy), it has Erik returning to his work.

Charles has dropped some hints about Erik being slightly more radical in his youth, with beliefs more along the lines of mutant supremacy rather than equality. In the early days of their relationship – or their relationship as Raven knew of it – she had done what cyberstalking you could back in 2002 and dug up very little. Of course, most of the extremist groups had been way underground and small even then, and their web presence had to have vanished years ago. And so Erik the revolutionary is another hypothetical, easily banished by the sight of him making sure the picnic has appropriately meat, vegetarian, and vegan options, and that Sean doesn't steal the potato chips.

One of the other things the picnic brings with it is the return of the friends who scatter out throughout the cities and their own lives throughout the year. Still, they all orbit this place, Charles's gigantic old house, and the myriad dramas of their lives – hey, they're all in their twenties, Raven figures they're allowed to be dramatic – somehow fall away once they step onto the house's grounds. Maybe it's Charles's influence, or maybe it's that both Charles and Erik together have some strange ability to push all the tension and difficulty away. The house has certainly been a haven for her, Raven thinks, as much as she's resented it sometimes.

Raven, drafted into helping organize some of the prizes for the games, runs into almost everyone and needs five times as long to get her work done because she has to stop and talk to everyone. There's Darwin and Alex, Sean (who, under dire threat from Erik, is staying a respectful distance from the food), the rest of Alex's family from his human parents to Scott and Gabriel, Jean Grey and Logan – to Scott's eternal discomfort, and talk about drama – and Marie, Remy, Morton, Emma Frost, Angel, Ororo, Azazel, Janos, the list goes on and on. It gets longer as more people arrive, kids Raven remembers as being infants racing around and disobeying orders not to get into the fountain. Hank shows up late, a lateness that would be fashionable if it weren't for the fact that she knows he still hates going out in public.

"Hey," she says as he lumbers up, and resists the urge to add _I didn't expect to see you here._

"Sorry I'm late; I got distracted with an article," Hank mumbles. For all his new, intimidating size, he hasn't changed much; he still looks away when he's saying something that's either a lie or that makes him uncomfortable. "It's, ah, good to see you."

"Yeah," is all Raven can find to say to that, along with, "Would you like a beer?"

She can't decide if she's relieved or not when he accepts. Mercifully, Charles is parked next to the cooler and, at a silent request from her, jumps in with a Shipyard and a question on Hank's dissertation. It gives her a chance to slip away and talk briefly with Darwin, who's too busy silently mooning over Alex to pay much attention, before she moves on to Angel.

"I could sit here all day." Angel's co-opted one part of a hillside for herself, safely away from the high-powered game of tag ranging across the lawn and, crucially, the more boring older adults chatting under a tent. She's in one of her usual low-backed tops, allowing her lovely gossamer wings to flick idly in the breeze and the sun. Darwin ambles up a moment later and collapses next to her, shifting when Angel grumbles about his shadow getting in the way.

Raven could stay here all day too. The group is maybe sixty strong, easily fifty more than the first gathering she can remember. Slitting her eyes against the brightness – it's high afternoon, the air lazy with heat and light – she watches as Charles approaches Erik and Erik looks down on him with an expression that might almost be called _fond_ , as Alex tries to steer Scott away from the train wreck that will be a conversation with Jean and Logan, as Ororo summons up a little tornado to impress Janos, as Emma narrowly avoids being trampled first by Alex and then by Sean in hot pursuit, as her drink almost spills on a man Raven doesn't recognize – 

– As the man takes something from his jacket, and why he would wear a jacket on such a warm day Raven has no idea, as the single, vicious punctuation of a gunshot rings through the air –

"Oh my god, what – is – oh my god, did he – _Erik_?"

Angel's voice comes from very far away. Darwin's already on his feet – he and Angel are already in her dust, Raven is pelting down the hillside. Her breath is tight in her lungs, so tight, and her skin doesn't know what to do with itself. No one else knows what to do either; there's a scuffle and a lot of shouting, another bang that nearly brings Raven to her knees with fright. Nothing seems to come of that, only stillness shattered only by a single cry.

"Erik!" It's Charles, oh god Charles, her brother's voice is broken, something split right through it, split like the wound Raven sees in Erik's abdomen, and he's spilling out terror like blood, terror in the litany of _Erik Erik Erik_. He's bent over awkwardly, unable to kneel down close because of the wheelchair and if he leans forward anymore he'll topple over.

Her past life is really that – a past life, some terrible dream she's left behind. But watching the blood, hearing Charles's voice from very far away – her past seems terribly present. She pushes through a knot of frightened people, distantly grateful for her strength, and stumbles into a space that's been kept clear only by Hank's growls and maybe the telepathic pressure she can feel tight against her skull. _Hank_ , Hank is here, and a small voice suggests that maybe everything will be okay, even with Erik lying there so still, stretched out next to a toppled-over table that's spilled its contents across the grass.

And Erik is staring at himself with an expression Raven thinks must be similar to the one on her own face, one of utter shock, before he moans and his head falls back onto the grass. Charles wears what Raven thinks is his own blood before she realizes it's Erik's, splashed across his face and the crisp pale blue of his t-shirt. She wonders how, how, what – it had to have been a gun, she _heard_ the shot, but guns are metal through and through, and surely Erik would have sensed…

"No time for that now," Charles is saying. He's mastered himself, fear pulled back inside his own head, and Raven's world is a little clearer, less blood-tinged. Her heart still wants to crawl up her throat. "Hank, please stay where you – "

"He needs an ambulance, Professor," Hank rumbles, as if Charles and the rest of them are idiots, as if Erik hasn't just been _shot_.

"I've called them," Charles says, "but Sean, if you could phone it in, just in case?" He keeps a close eye on where Hank has a huge palm down on the flat of Erik's stomach, tendrils of red running up through his fingers and soaking into his fur. "Erik, my love, I need you to listen to me."

"You always say that," Erik grunts. One eye opens, glassy with pain, and fixes on Charles, who has wheeled as close as he can get, stricken face saying he wishes he were closer. "You also say I never listen."

"Please listen this once?" Erik grunts again. "I need you to not die. And I need you to stay here with Hank while I deal with our visitor."

"He came for you, why the fuck – "

"And we'll talk about your… your bloody _heroics_ later," Charles snaps. "And I will yell at you properly _after_ we have you put back together. But for now… please, darling." Charles's voice quivers, fracturing a little more. "Please, Erik."

"I broke his wrist," Erik murmurs, half-opened eye falling shut. "Dominant hand."

"You need to stay awake." Charles has managed to get one of Erik's hands in one of his, chafing the long bones of Erik's fingers. Raven's seen those large, capable hands giving metal life, playing chess, curving around Charles's wrists, glancing quickly across his cheek – a thousand thousand small gestures she's never really noticed. "Stay awake," Charles is saying, "you need to tell Hank if anything's wrong."

"I'm bleeding out, Charles," Erik mumbles.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Hank says. He glances up at Raven briefly, his lips peeling back in something like a smile that shouldn't be reassuring but is.

"There's a lad." Charles doesn't let go of Erik's hand, and there's something distant in his voice when he asks Raven if she's okay, something that suggests his telepathy is focusing the immensity of Charles's attention on Erik.

"I'm fine. Can't you help him not feel it?" Raven asks. She has to knuckle an embarrassing mixture of tears and snot away from her face.

"He needs to be able to tell me if something's wrong – well, more wrong." Charles passes a grubby hand across his own face. "I – my abilities don't work like that, Raven. I wish they did. And as for our friend here," Charles's expression becomes immeasurably colder, very nearly foreign as he looks over Raven's shoulder, "well. I should talk to him before the police get here."

Of course they should. Law enforcement's record when it comes to crimes directed specifically at mutants is fairly abysmal. It's one of the reasons the MSL exists. Although, looking at Charles right now, Raven's fairly sure that social justice isn't on Charles's mind right now.

"Raven, love, Raven," Charles's voice brings her back to herself. It's a bright, lovely day and Erik is lying, white t-shirt soaked through to crimson. "I need you to get everyone inside." Hank, stay with Erik, the paramedics are almost here. Erik, _do not move_."

She registers only that Charles wants her to do one thing. Looking over her shoulder, she sees that Angel and the parents have herded the little ones up to the house. It makes sense that she goes with them, because she knows where everything is, where the games are so they can distract the kids and they won't have to ask questions like _Is Mr. Lehnsherr going to die_.

"He's not dying," Charles tells her as he pushes the brake off his chair and rolls forward. When she follows him, heeling his wheelchair, he glances up at her. His eyes, behind Erik's blood, are clear and chilly. "Raven, no. Go inside."

"No way, Charles," Raven says and adds silently _I'm coming with you_ with all her determination behind it. She won't be shuffled off to quiet and safety, not now when her blood is up and she wants to _do_ something.

 _Very well_. Her brother's voice isn't like she's ever heard it before, and she's heard him angry and grieving, sometimes both at once, lecturing or so infuriatingly _kind_ , but this… this is different.

Another thing she knows intellectually about Charles is that he's very powerful. It's also something she doesn't examine too closely, preferring her geeky academic brother to the creature that's looking at her now, immense, _immeasurable_ strength peering out at her from just behind that familiar face. And she realizes, in the swift space between one heartbeat and the next, that this is something she's never seen before, her brother whole and entire, and it's because of _Erik_ he's come out of hiding. The mantra she's had since she was fifteen, _Mutant and proud, mutant and proud_ , hasn't quite prepared her for what's looking at her now.

In some other time, Charles would soothe her, but that vast attention has focused itself onto another target, grappled into submission by Alex and Darwin. Darwin's gone hard and scaly all over, and the reason for it lies in a patch of churned-up ground: a small gun, although not much like one Raven's ever seen, and a deformed bullet lying nearby.

"Thank you," Charles says coolly, nodding at Alex and Darwin, who grunts something that sounds like _no problem_. Alex meaningfully jostles the man, who bites back a cry, and Raven sees why: his left wrist, encased by a steel watch, has been crushed.

The man is gray-bearded, well-tended. Raven has an eye for these things, and she can put together a few basic facts and relay them to Charles: educated, good taste, maybe military. _Asshole_ she adds, fear fading away as anger takes over, easier now that Darwin and Alex have Stryker trussed up, and generally Raven's found that being angry is easier than being frightened anyway.

"Lieutenant William Stryker," Charles says, cold enough to chill the summer air. Raven shivers, her scales rising like hackles. "I'm curious to know why you came here today, and I'll do you the courtesy of asking first."

"Freak," is all Stryker has to say to that. Raven aches to knee him in the stomach, and she's pretty sure Alex and Darwin would let her; only Charles's voice, dimensions of power behind it, keeps her from going for it.

"Machined cubic zirconium barrel in ceramic. Only the firing pins were metal, and the bullet was carbon," Charles says. He wheels closer, and even though he's looking up at Stryker, the man goes pale as if Charles is looming. Maybe, in Stryker's mind, he is. "And you've trained yourself well enough to pass cursory psychic inspection."

"It worked, didn't it?" Stryker taunts. Long enough to get me close enough, and if your mutie freak _whatever_ hadn't gotten you out of the way – "

Erik had taken that bullet for Charles. Raven replays the moment, what she remembers of it: Erik and Charles outside the tent, Charles with his back to Stryker – Erik maybe seeing the barrel come up, or abruptly detecting the shape and significance of the metal in Stryker's jacket, realizing he had no grasp of the bullet waiting in the chamber, and using his abilities to push Charles out of the way. He'd done that… Christ. He'd done that _for Charles_.

"If he hadn't gotten me out of the way, you would be dead," Charles says flatly. Stryker goes a little pale, although he straightens as much as Alex and Darwin will let him. "As it is… you don't know the magnitude of the mistake you've made coming here and seeking to harm either one of us, have you?"

"If he did, he wouldn't have done it," Raven says. Stryker's lip curls as he turns to look at her.

"What are you going to do?" he asks, dismissing Raven as unimportant. "Last time I checked, psychically violating someone is still a crime."

The look Charles gives Stryker is a look Raven hopes she never has turned on her. It's the expression worn by something vast and unknowable encountering the small, considering it. There are sirens far away, coming closer by the heartbeat – Stryker's salvation, she can tell he's thinking, that the crippled mutant in his wheelchair can't do anything now, not with witnesses.

"If he dies," Charles says so, so very softly, "I can promise you that you will be left to scream out the rest of your nights in terror. And I can promise you I won't suffer for it, because you see… I know you, William Stryker. I know why you came here to kill me," _it was his son, I had spoken to him about the MSL and resources for kids in need; he didn't need reparative therapy to deny his abilities and make him normal_ , "and the weapon you used and where you got it, and how many people out there share your views. I know that there's no law barring law enforcement from using the evidence provided by telepaths who are not acting as agents of the law. An inconvenient loophole for you, wouldn't you say?"

"Go to hell," Stryker growls. He winces suddenly and cries out, eyes wide and vacant – or filled, maybe, with whatever Charles is putting there. He chokes, cries again before his breath cuts off. Raven has the briefest impression of air cutting off, crawling oblivion and knowing with each moment that the very core of herself is being hollowed out before it vanishes.

"You'll be there tonight, if my husband dies." Charles's eyes narrow and Stryker collapses into Alex and Darwin's arms, gasping pathetically. Raven _aches_ add something to his misery. "You just might be anyway."

They can't say anymore. Already the police are here, heavy riot gear and all because they're mutants and therefore dangerous; the officers look almost disappointed when they realize the man they're bringing in is disarmed, injured, and very much contained. The paramedics, much more useful, barrel past them and don't hesitate even for Hank's humungous bulk, and they don't so much as blink at Hank's low, rasping growl as he explains the extent of the injuries.

By the time the medics have taken over, the police have read Stryker his rights and hauled him off to get his wrist seen to. Moira's close behind; as a mutant-human liaison, she'll be going along to make sure mutant rights are observed in the state's handling of the case. (This isn't the same as the bad old days, but still.) One of the medics wants to look at Charles, who suffers her to rub a damp cloth over his face to clean off the blood but flatly rejects anything else.

"Good work, man," one of her colleagues says to Hank, who lumbers back out of the way of the stretcher and makes a softly pleased noise.

Erik doesn't look like Erik as they push him past Raven. He's buried under fleece blankets and plastic tubing and an oxygen mask, god only knows what under the blanket, an IV already in. The stretcher rattles, and Charles peels himself away from his paramedic, wheeling quickly over.

"He's metallokinetic," he says as various metal things inside the ambulance start to shake.

"Sir, you can follow if you want," the paramedic tries to say. Charles ignores him utterly, all his focus bent on Erik, who's staring blindly at him, the look between them palpable as steel chains. Charles is touching his wedding ring, index finger tracing the band. A hint of Charles's voice flickers through her mind, directions for the house, come to the hospital, _you need to take care of things, my darling. I trust you._

She doesn't move, though. Instead, she watches as Charles tries to explain himself to the medics, as the shaking in everything metal – the stretcher, the ambulance, the nearby cars, the tent poles – calms. It's not that Erik's lost consciousness, it's that Charles is calming him, the edges of it lapping over Raven like a quilt.

"He won't cooperate unless he's with me," Charles snaps. "Now, you can either have an angry, uncooperative mutant in pain, or you can have the opposite. It's your choice, gentlemen."

"Your wheelchair," the paramedic tries. "I'm sorry, sir, but we can't."

"Of course," Charles says, nettled. "I'll go with the officer, then."

Fortunately for him, the officer agrees. They have Charles in the squad car, wheelchair packed into the back, in no time, and then they're peeling out, sirens blaring.

Charles has his eyes shut, temple pressed against the glass, mind riding along in the ambulance they're escorting. Raven stares blindly at the ambulance doors as they swing shut, unable to believe that Erik's in there.

* * *

After she finishes with the detectives and gets everyone home, she has a message from Charles, a telepathic one keyed to a particular pitch of brain activity that indicates she's no longer harried.

 _Erik's in surgery. Thank you, darling._ It comes with a tinge of affection and gratitude, and it makes Raven want to curl up and sob, so she does. Hank finds her like that and holds her awkwardly as she stammers out her fear and her rage, and worst of all, how _stupid_ she's been, not seeing what's in front of her face. The _ferocity_ of it shakes her; the thought that Charles was fully prepared to carry through on his threat frightens her a little when she's not awed by it.

"It would kill him if Erik died," she sniffles. Hank's fur tickles her nose, an unexpected bit of light in the dark study and her dark thoughts. "And I think… it would kill Erik too, wouldn't it?"

"As good as, I suppose," Hank rumbles, stroking her hair very carefully. Raven remembers him from only a few hours ago, pressing hard-but-not-too-hard against Erik's stomach to keep Erik inside. His hands are clean now, and don't smell like wet dog. "I, uh… I guess that's why the professor did what he did, and why Erik did what he did." He pauses, both his words and the fingers sifting through her hair. "I know we don't – ah, um. That is, I would do that for you, if it had been you Stryker had… Well."

As grand declarations of passion go, it's not terribly grand, more hesitant than anything.

"I would too," Raven tells him, and winds her arms around his neck.

* * *

Despite Hank's words and company, the night she has is not one she ever wants to repeat. Charles wanders into her dreams to tell her Erik's out of surgery and is under observation, but the line between dream and reality is so confused she doesn't know if he's a dream himself or is Charles-Charles and giving her good news.

The next morning, she drives to the hospital. She knows the way to Claremont almost by heart, given it's the place where Charles had taken her to set her broken leg, where she's picked up various friends or even MSL acquaintances. Her cell phone has been silent the past few hours, except for a call from Moira to say that Stryker is going to be arraigned in the afternoon and she'll be handling all the legalities, including the possible repercussions from what Charles pulled in pulling that information out of Stryker's head. The details about an anti-mutant hate group, possible funding for Stryker's weapon and training, go right past her.

 _It doesn't mean anything_ , she reminds herself. Hospitals don't allow cell phones in most places, because of the equipment. Charles is probably in shock, or plowing through piles of paperwork, or trying to argue Erik into submission so the doctors can look at him. Her hands tighten around the wheel so the leather creaks between her fingers and she presses harder on the gas pedal.

The next half-hour is a blur, the anonymous traffic of the city transitioning to the parking garage to the long, regimented aisles and the stench of gasoline fumes. Then the blinding whiteness of the hospital and faces faces faces; she doesn't bother with her own face, keeps it defiantly blue and her golden eyes fixed on the receptionist as she asks for Erik Lehnsherr's room.

She only stops moving when she gets to Erik's room – disguised as a nurse because, as it turns out, these aren't visiting hours, and Erik is still in the step-down unit. They'd let him out of ICU late in the morning, minus a spleen – she'd picked that up by eavesdropping at the nurses' station when she'd heard them gossiping about the "cute one, pity he's married" – and he's… he's _alive_. Raven's thoughts snag on that, unable to untangle themselves from it.

He's alive and talking softly, she realizes as she stops outside his door, which is slightly open. She can see the two of them through the blinds of the window looking in, which are not lowered.

Charles has pushed down one of the railings so he can curl, awkward as it is, against Erik, his forehead pressed to the strong curve of Erik's shoulder. One hand is laced tightly in Erik's, their fingers a complicated knot, resting high on Erik's chest and carefully clear of the bullet wound. Erik's other hand is in Charles's hair – which, now that Raven thinks about it, he spends a lot of time stroking, feeling out the ridiculous curls and waves – and he looks exhausted, pale, washed out to a ghost of himself, but so _relieved_.

"I couldn't feel anything properly," Erik is saying. "I couldn't stop that bullet, whatever it was. And I reacted."

"Of course you did, you stupid bugger." Charles's voice has a shakiness to it that suggests tears. Raven catches the edges of Erik's wide-mouthed smile, closed as it is, but broad and unmistakable. "But, god, Erik, don't make me go through that again. _Swear_ to me you won't."

"I can't make that promise, Charles," Erik murmurs, the closest to tender and regretful Raven's ever heard him. "You remember what I said to you, yes?"

"I can't very well be by your side if you're dead," Charles says tartly. His fingers tighten on Erik's. "But if… if you'd – if Stryker had done what he came to do, I don't know what I would have done. I only know I wouldn't have regretted it."

After yesterday, Raven doesn't know either. When she'd been awake last night, she'd had to repaint her pictures of Charles and Erik, and she's realized she never had the shades for Charles's power or Erik's determination, or their devotion. She's not sure if she'll ever have it; maybe Hank, she thinks, could help her.

Before Charles untangles himself from Erik enough to realizes she's there – and before an actual nurse catches her out – Raven creeps away, but not before stealing one last look, for the sigh that shakes Charles's body and Erik's fingers stroking through Charles's dark hair, never letting go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more news:
> 
> I have a kind-of, sort-of Tumblr! If you would like to follow me, I am **theletteraesc**.
> 
> 'Frosted Hearts' will be continued as my contribution to the XM Big Bang, and I swear you will love the art. You will love. it. The other longer fics, especially the yoga one, will be finished I hope some time before my hands decide just to fall off.


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